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THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 



IN 



THE REPUBLIC 
OF PLATO. 



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THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 



IN 



THE REPUBLIC 
OF PLATO 



TRANSLATED 
INTO ENGLISH WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 



EY 

BERNARD BOSANQUET, MA., LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF 'A COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC.' 



STEREOTYPED EDITION. 



CAMBRIDGE. 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 

1901 

[All Rights reserved.} 



>-) Ais 



First Edition iyoo- Reprinted 1901 
^1 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

THE present volume is intended to bring before English 
readers the description and theory of education for the 
young which is found in the earlier books of Plato's Republic. 
The volume ends with the account of a commonwealth consider- 
ed as a moral organism, which explains the reason and purpose 
of that earlier education. It must be understood that here we 
have before us only a portion of the educational scheme, and 
only the preface to the philosophical conceptions, which Plato 
sets forth in the Republic as a whole. And this volume may 
possibly serve, to some readers, as an introduction to a com- 
pleter study of the Republic 1 and of Plato's ideas. 

There are obvious reasons which make it convenient and 
desirable for an annotator to supplement his commentary by a 
version from his own hand. This practice implies no desire 
to compare his own version, on its whole merits, with those 
which have found their recognised place in English litera- 
ture. Its object is to set before students a definite type 
of renderings and conceptions, which otherwise could only be 
conveyed by a greatly extended commentary. 

The only deviation from the text is the omission of a few 
lines in pp. 402 — 3. 

BERNARD BOSANQUET. 

1 See the author's Companion to Plato's Republic t Rivington & Co. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Introduction . . i — 23 

1. Greek Education in the best days of Greece . . 1 

2. Education in Plato's Republic 12 

i. Education of the Young in Plato's Republic . . 12 

ii. The Higher Education in Plato's Republic . . 14 

3. Education after Plato's Time . . . . . . 17 

4. The Opening Argument of the Republic . . . 22 

Note on the Form of the Dialogues and their relation to 

Socrates 26 

Translation of Book II., 366 to end ..... 7- 

Translation of Book III 6 4 

Translation of Book IV. . • 1^3 



EDUCATION IN PLATO'S TIME. 



INTRODUCTION. 

I. GREEK EDUCATION IN THE BEST DAYS OF 
GREECE. 

The following account of a Greek education in the best 
days of Greece may be taken as substantially true. When the 
speaker insists upon the attention devoted to moral training, he 
is making a point which his argument happens to need. But 
the passage, which comes from one of Plato's imaginary con- 
versations, would have lost its force if it had gone beyond the 
bounds of probability. 

"From the moment that a child can understand pretty 
quickly what is said, his nurse and his mother and his tutor 
and even his father strive their hardest for this one end, that 
the boy may be as good as possible. At every deed and word 
they are teaching him and pointing out to him, ' This is right, 
that is wrong ; This is pretty, that is ugly ; This is pious, that 
is impious ; Do this, Don't do that.' So if he obeys them of 
his own accord it is well, if not, they correct him with threats 
and blows, like a bit of wood which is twisting and warping. 
After that, when they send him to the schoolmasters', they urge 
upon them to look after the children's good behaviour much 

B. I 



2 Education in Plato's Time. 

more than their letters or their lyre-playing. And the school- 
masters do pay great attention to this ; and again, when the 
boys have learned their letters, and are on the point of under- 
standing what they find in books, as before they understood 
what was told them, the teachers set them to work on their 
benches to read the poems of great poets, and oblige them to 
learn these by heart, containing as they do many admonitions, 
and many adventures, and commendations and laudations of 
good men of old, that the boy may set his heart on imitating 
them, and long to grow up such as they. And in the same 
way again, the teachers of the lyre take precautions for morality 
and that the boys may do nothing wrong ; and besides this, 
when they have learned to play the lyre, they teach them 
poems of other good poets again, lyrical poets, setting them to 
the lyre ; and they compel the rhythm and the tunes to be 
appropriated by the souls of the boys, that these may be the 
more gentle, and becoming more rhythmical and more tuneful 
may be of use for speech and action ; for man's whole life 
needs good rhythm and good tune. 

" Then, moreover, in addition to this, they send them to the 
gymnastic master's, that they may be in better bodily condition 
to serve their good intelligence, and may not be obliged to run 
away from their duty owing to bodily defectiveness, whether in 
war or in any other line of action. All this is what those do 
who are best able ; and those best able are the most wealthy. 
And it is their sons who begin to attend the teachers at the 
earliest age, and who leave off latest." 

If now we write down in a few words the general nature of 
what was learned by a Greek citizen's son in the best age of 
Greece from the whole of the regular teaching which was given 
him, we are disposed to reflect that it amounts to no more than 
what we should call a primary education, with one exceptional 
feature. He was taught reading and writing, to which a little 
practical arithmetic was added, and in some cases perhaps the 



Greek Education in the best days of Greece. 3 

elements of geometry ; he was taught to sing, and to play 
a simple stringed instrument ; and — here is the feature which 
we at once recognise as exceptional— he was instructed in 
dancing and in very various athletic exercises by a special 
teacher, whose lessons he attended no less regularly than those 
of his other masters, and for quite as many years of his life. 

But on looking closer we see that this very simple primary 
training filled the place and in some degree did the work of 
what we should call a secondary education. Its apparent 
scantiness did not arise from want of money or of time, though 
in a certain sense it arose from want of knowledge. It was 
held to be the right and the best education, and was imparted 
in that spirit. It formed the whole systematic preparation for 
life enjoyed by the ruling classes in the highly civilised Greek 
commonwealths, until by gradual steps something correspond- 
ing to University culture was introduced among a part of them. 
The serious attention given to athletic training, which in some 
ways finds a parallel in the rank held by games at English 
public schools and Universities, is part of its character as 
an education for a leisured class ; to whom efficiency in war 
was a duty, and a fine physical development an end in itself. 
The same thing is true of the time for which education was 
continued. In Greece, as elsewhere, the children of the rich 
attended school to a later age than those of the poor, and the 
only limitation we know of is indicated by the Athenian custom 
that boys in their 17th or 18th year were enrolled in a sort of 
cadet corps to which real patrol duties were assigned, incom- 
patible with the continuance of school education. We shall 
return to this cadet corps, the famous body of " Ephebi " or 
" lads who have just become men," in speaking of the aims of 
Greek education and of its later development. 

Thus it would appear that for the whole of his boyhood, 
say from the age of seven or eight to that of fourteen or sixteen 
(though unhappily we have no warrant for these or any other 
precise figures), the Greek lad was mainly occupied with the 

r — 2 



Education in Plato's Tim 



L. 



three " R's," with singing and playing the lyre, and with training 
in bodily exercises. We do not really know how these occupa- 
tions were distributed in the day's work, though we have 
certain general descriptions of Greek educational life, such as 
that cited above. But our question, at present, is what the 
boy was actually acquiring all this time. How was this ele- 
mentary education handled, that it made so much out of so 
little ? For almost the whole of what we think positive know- 
ledge is here conspicuous by its absence. There are no foreign 
languages, no dead languages, no scientific grammar, no history 
nor geography, no Scripture teaching, and no natural science, 
still less the elements of any industrial or professional know- 
ledge. 

To avoid exaggeration in our answer to this question, we 
must remind ourselves of certain obvious points. The arith- 
metical notation in use was extremely cumbrous. Books, again, 
though quite attainable, were costly, and lessons dealing with 
them were no doubt largely carried on by dictation from copies 
in the teacher's hands. In Greek writing, the words were not 
separated, and the difficulty of dividing them must have been 
a great hindrance in learning to read. It seems probable too 
that instruction in the three "R's" only began when the boy 
entered on attendance at the day-school ; in other words that it 
began late, perhaps at seven or eight years of age— Plato 
advises ten — and that no foundation was laid by home instruc- 
tion except in the correct speaking of the mother tongue. We 
do not know what the school hours were, but probably they 
were not long, especially if the reading-school, the music- 
school, and the gymnasium (using the word in our sense) were 
all three attended on the same day Thus the simplest educa- 
tional processes may have extended over a longer period than 
would be the case with modern methods and appliances. 

The tardiness so caused might indeed have its advantages, 
and in the age, for instance, of beginning to read, modern 
educators are returning to it. A boy, too, who had to struggle 



Greek Education in the best days of Greece. 5 

with a clumsy notation, might be more likely to reflect on the 
nature and relations of number than we to whom it seems like 
a law of nature that numbers must be written and put together 
in a single and very facile way. There are intellectual dangers 
even in our uncompromising assumption that the word is the 
unit of language, which might be lessened by having to learn 
the practice of interpunction (dividing word from word within 
the sentence). And thus we may conceive that very simple 
matters might occupy time and also have educational value in 
the then condition of the human mind, which are now rapidly 
acquired as formulae, and serve merely as stepping-stones to 
real education. 

But when we have allowed for all this, the scantiness of 
the educational scheme still excites our amazement, if we com- 
pare it with the work required from a moderately well taught 
public schoolboy to-day. How, we repeat, was so much made 
out of so little ? The answer lies in what has already been 
implied. The education, however imperfect, was given as 
being the best. There was a comparative absence of distortion 
by pressure of practical necessities. And so the very simple 
subject-matters, by help of which the mind was trained, 
naturally expanded, so to speak, in the absence of external 
resistance, to their fullest range as influences on mind and 
character. 

The study of letters, of reading and writing in the mother 
tongue, pursued in a persistent and leisurely way, came to 
involve a considerable knowledge of the ancestral classics of 
the Greek race, the Homeric poems, not merely by reading, 
but by committing to memory and by the habit of reciting. 
What this might mean to a boy in ancient Greece we possess 
little that can help us to imagine. If the heroes of Roman 
History or the personages of the Bible belonged to our own 
national past — were indeed our own reputed ancestors — had 
been celebrated by a Shakespeare in our mother tongue, and 
the poems so created were something like one half of the whole 



6 Education in Plato's Time. 

literature accessible to us, they might then master our imagina- 
tion as Homer mastered that of the Greeks. And when we 
look at the matter in this way, we come nearer to understanding 
the alleged Greek estimate of Homer as a teacher of life and 
morals. We are, no doubt, inclined to think, with Plato, that 
to make a poet, who sings of half-civilised times, your authority 
in morals and religion is absurd on the face of it. But whether 
we will or no, a literature from which we borrow more than half 
our ideas is in a very real sense authoritative for us. It acts on 
us by a "suggestion" — through an effect of "imitation," as 
Plato would say — from which we cannot escape. And we 
must not forget the influence of recitation under careful training 
in impressing suggestions on a boy's mind. So much for the 
study of "letters" — it secured for the boys their entrance into 
the common national world, gave them in general their first 
ideas and impulses regarding things human and divine, and 
was not interrupted, but continued and developed, as the mind 
expanded into later boyhood and early youth. 

And the protracted exercises in playing the lyre and in 
singing followed the same lines. The boy was thoroughly 
familiarised with the older and accepted forms of music, a very 
simple music, for which perhaps our hymn tunes 1 afford the 
nearest modern analogy. And here again, in a persistent and 
leisurely way, the boy would receive into himself a great part 
of the best lyrical poetry of his nation ; and the practice of 
singing and playing accompaniments, through which he was 
taught it, could not but foster in his mind some sort of 
characteristic taste and impulse ; some preference as between 
different types of songs, their music, their sentiments and their 
heroes. It seems clear that as was the case in England not so 
long ago, but much more so owing to the absence of books, 
the school-boy was expected to sing and recite for the edifica- 

1 The comparison refers only to the simplicity and well-marked 
character of the music. I do not mean to suggest a strictly musical 
analogy between ancient and modern music of any kind. 



Greek Education in the best days of Greece. 7 

tion of the home circle ; and no doubt his taste and bearing 
in singing and reciting was just such a revelation of his 
character to his parents as a boy's favourite reading is to-day. 
And this importance given to the whole subject helps to ex- 
plain why Plato thought so much about the characters in which 
boys were to recite, and the melodies and sentiments they 
were to sing. Not all parents, even to-day, would be delighted 
to find that their boy had surpassed himself mainly in acting 
Sir John Falstaff, or in singing opera bouffe ; and we may argue 
from this how such matters would be regarded, and what would 
be their actual influence on the young, when singing, reading 
and learning by heart were among the chief instruments by 
which education was caried on. It is a striking picture which 
Aristophanes draws for us, writing late in the 5th century B.C., of 
the educational customs of an earlier and as he thinks of a 
better date. Of course we must remember that the account 
is a comedian's poetry and is not history. "The boys of the 
quarter had to march through the streets in good order to the 
music master's, all together, without overcoats 1 , even if it were 
snowing like meal. Then he would teach them to rehearse a 
song sitting decently and in order, either 'Pallas I celebrate, 
sacker of cities, terrible goddess of war,' or 'The far-sounding 
cry of the lyre,' to the serious tune which our fathers handed 
down. And if any of them played the buffoon or turned any 
inflection like those troublesome inflections of the new music 
of to-day, he was visited with a sound whipping, for bringing 
the Muses into contempt." 

The third, or if "music" includes both letters and singing 
the second, branch of a Greek boy's training, had in practice 
as in Plato's theory, points of connection with the first. The 
gymnastic master in teaching the boys to dance must have 

1 The writer can remember when there was a strong tradition at 
Harrow, and at Eton, he believes, something like a school rule, pro- 
hibiting the use of overcoats, even when the boys had to go half a mile 
to school before 7 A.M. on a winter's morning. 



8 Education in Plato s Time. 

come very near the province of the music master ; especially 
as Greek dancing was to a great extent dancing in character, 
so that different types of musical and dramatic expression were 
hardly less involved in it than in playing and singing or 
recitation. On the other side, the practice of dancing was 
connected with training in the use of arms ; for the dance with 
shield and spear was a display which the State expected from 
the young men on festival occasions, and was no doubt care- 
fully learned and rehearsed with the gymnastic master. Besides 
dancing, the sports practised under the gymnastic master seem 
to have been jumping, the foot race, hurling the disc (not 
exactly quoit-playing, but throwing a heavy disc for a long 
distance), throwing the javelin, and wrestling. It seems true 
that this scheme of training was not calculated to foster the 
social and self-governing spirit which is embodied in the games 
of an English school. But as regards the question of a com- 
plete and serviceable bodily education there is something to 
be said on the other side. Mr Maclaren, I think, has pointed 
out, that our exercises in games and rowing leave the bodily 
development too much to chance, so that it tends to be unequal, 
and needs to be corrected by just such special attention under 
a master as the Greek system provided. And it might also be 
urged that on the Greek method the educational aim of the 
whole procedure was more easily borne in mind ; the lads 
would be kept in hand, so to speak, and the narrow semi- 
professional spirit which tends to grow up in our specialised 
and hotly contested games might be hindered from arising. If 
any definite bodily service was before the minds of the Greek 
youth during their gymnastic education, it would be that of war 
on behalf of their country, except in the case of the few who 
might decide to train for the Olympic or other games. And 
preparation for military service is a better all-round type of 
preparation for life than the devotion to games and athletic 
feats, which chiefly demand a highly specialised skill and 
peculiar bodily condition. Not that we must deny the possi- 



Greek Education in the best days of Greece. 9 

bility of a system which should combine the excellences of the 
Greek and the English plan. 

As we saw, the close of the boy's education was marked at 
Athens by his being enrolled at 17 or 18 in the cadet corps 
of "those who have come to manhood." This corps, the 
"Ephebi," had garrison and patrol duty assigned them within 
the borders of Attica, and had a certain place and importance 
at public festivals. The elaborate organisation of it as a sort 
of undergraduate body belongs to a later date than that 01 
which we are speaking ; and almost seems to mark the end of 
its practical service as a feature in the self-defence of a free 
State. 

It may be of interest here to cite the oath of the Ephebi ; 
the confirmation vow, as we might call it, of an Athenian 
citizen, which marked his entrance upon civic manhood and the 
end of his school education. At the age of 17 or 18, imme- 
diately after being entered upon the citizen register of his 
district, and being about to receive the soldier's shield and 
spear in presence of the assembled citizens, he made oath to 
the following effect : " I will not dishonour my sacred arms ; 
I will not desert my fellow-soldier, by whose side I shall be set ; 
I will do battle for my religion and my country whether aided 
or unaided. I will leave my country not less, but greater and 
more powerful, than she is when committed to me; I will reve- 
rently obey the citizens who shall act as judges; I will obey the 
ordinances which have been established, and which in time to 
come shall be established, by the national will ; and whosoever 
would destroy or disobey these ordinances, I will not suffer him, 
but I will do battle for them whether aided or unaided ; and I 
will honour the temples where my fathers worshipped ; of these 
things the gods are my witnesses." 

The schools for letters and music and the schools for 
gymnastic, as teaching institutions, were private enterprises. 
Public gymnasia existed, and were much visited by the citizens; 
but they were not schools of gymnastic. There was a certain 



io Education in Plato s Time. 

amount of variety and experiment even in the school education, 
especially just about and after the greatest days of free Greece. 
Drawing was introduced, in some cases, at a slightly later time; 
and a noteworthy ground is alleged for the practice, "to make 
the scholars apt to appreciate the beauty of objects." We 
have a curious history of flute-playing, on good autho- 
rity. It became a fashionable study just in the great time, 
when the Athenians were eager for novelty, but its ethical 
influence was thought bad, and it was discarded again. Plato's 
feeling about it is noteworthy in this connection (see Republic, 
399 d, e). There was something in the wind instrument that 
seemed barbaric to the Greeks. And other teachers, being 
perfectly free to do so, no doubt offered classes which boys 
might be sent to at their own or their parents' wish. 
We hear in this way of "scholars," who could do more 
for the explanation of the classics than the elementary 
schoolmaster, of geometricians, and of teachers of military 
tactics. 

There remains a difference of principle worth observing in 
the gymnastic education of different States. In some the training 
was more specialised to feats of strength and skill, accenting 
certain special muscles and actually spoiling the figure ; in 
others the idea of general serviceableness for the ends of life, 
and with it of beauty or complete development, was more 
effectively retained. It is as a type of this latter kind that 
fitness for military service was considered by the theorists a fair 
test of a good all-round bodily training. Sound health, not 
easily shaken by hardship and accidents of diet, and supporting 
a vigilant and spirited frame of mind with adequate bodily 
activity, seemed to them a better foundation for life than the 
power of achieving special muscular feats under highly artificial 
conditions. It is for this reason, and not from blood-thirstiness, 
that the theorists think highly of a bodily training designed on 
the whole to ensure fitness for military service. Sparta is 
praised for her educational system, looked at in this light, 



Greek Education in the best days of Greece. 1 1 

though blamed in that the higher ends of life were not super- 
added by her to the training for war. 

Girls, it will be observed, are not mentioned in this discus- 
sion. They learned enough reading and writing, it would 
seem, to manage the household accounts \ but their education 
must have been carried on within the household, which was 
almost Oriental in the seclusion of its women. This state of 
things both emphasises and explains the violence of the revo- 
lution which Plato advocated, in demanding for women (in the 
later books of the Republic) an equal share in the pursuits and 
the 'education of men. 

When we compare the ancient Greek education with our 
own, whether primary or secondary, as a training of the whole 
man, we are surprised to find ourselves put upon our defence. 
We suffer from an embarras de richesses in the intellectual 
world; and we can hardly see the wood for the trees. We 
teach one thing after another, or a number of things at the 
same time, rather as the most convenient way of making room 
for all that seems necessary to be learned, than with the aim of 
bringing before the growing mind as much and no more of the 
best experience as it is able to appropriate with advantage to 
its growth. We think of education, on the whole, as an in- 
tellectual process, as a process of learning a number of things, 
each of which, on separate grounds, is necessary to be known. 
The Greek thought of it, on the whole, as a moral process ; or 
rather, he would not have understood you, if you had asked 
him which of the two he supposed it to be. He would have 
said that the best experience, if due time and opportunity is 
given for assimilating it, necessarily enters into the tissue of 
the mind, and determines its feelings and desires no less than 
its views and ideas. We are all aware, probably, that the 
word "school" is derived from a Greek word meaning "leisure." 
This conception of " leisure " is one of the greatest ideas that 
the Greeks have left us. It is not that of amusement or 
holiday-making. It is opposed both to this and to the pressure 



12 Education in Plato's Time. 

of bread-winning industry, and indicates, as it were, the space 
and atmosphere needed for the human plant to throw out its 
branches and flowers in their proper shape. "To have leisure 
for " any occupation, was to devote yourself to it freely, because 
your mind demanded it ; to make it, as it were, your hobby. 
It does not imply useless work, but it implies work done for 
the love of it. In the modern world leisure is a hard thing to 
get ; and yet, wherever a mind is really and truly growing, the 
spirit of leisure is there. It is worth thinking of, how far in 
education the idea of the growth of a mind can be made the 
central point, so that the things which are considered worth 
teaching may really have time to sink into and to nourish the 
whole human being, morally and intellectually alike. In as 
far as this problem is solved we shall attain a higher result than 
was attained by the Greeks, in proportion as our resources for 
appealing to human nature are more varied and profound than 
theirs. 



2. EDUCATION IN PLATO S REPUBLIC. 

\. Edtication of the Young in Plato s Republic. 

In the part of the Republic which we have here before us 
Plato's proposals are based on the existing education of the 
young. He does not condemn the system of his day, but is of 
opinion that its originators builded better than they knew. 
They followed, indeed, not theory but experience ; yet ex- 
perience — " the great length of time " — has on the whole 
guided them well. Of the true principle, however, which 
underlay their work, they themselves were unconscious, and 
such a principle he is attempting to point out, much as a 
sympathetic critic to-day will attempt to explain the true theory 
of classical or "scientific" education or of open air games and 



Education in Plato s Republic. 13 

sports, admitting certain defects and suggesting certain amend- 
ments. His views are fully before us in the portion of the 
Republic which we are to study, and a word or two of 
additional information is all that is needed here. When Plato 
looks back on the education of the young from a later point in 
the Republic — from a point at which his fuller conception of 
human life has been developed — he adds one or two details to 
that treatment of it which we have before us in Bks. 11 — iv. 
He makes clear the time for which it is to last, viz. from the 
beginning of the boy's school-days to about the age of 17, or 
if we include the period of serious and exclusive devotion to 
bodily exercises, to the age of 20. This period, 17 to 20, in 
which no intellectual work was to be attempted, corresponds 
to the time spent by an Athenian youth, or " Ephebos," in 
preparatory military duty within Attica. He also makes it 
clear that the education by Music and Gymnastic is not to 
exclude the elements of arithmetic, geometry, and perhaps 
other mathematical sciences. The boy is to " play " with 
these, not to be hard worked at them; the object is' not for 
him to master them during his boyhood, but that later on he 
may find himself prepared to pursue them seriously, without 
having had his interest crushed by hard labour before his 
powers are matured. At the age of 20 a selection is to take 
place of those who are fitted to enter upon a further education, 
great regard being had to character as shown in the bodily 
exercises. Here then is the point of junction between the edu- 
cation of the young Greek citizen as we see it in Bks. 11 — iv 
of the Republic, and the education of a human mind to the 
fullest practical and theoretical efficiency, as Plato has tried to 
sketch it in the later books. In the former we were dealing 
with the highest theory of the traditional Greek education. 
But in the latter we are face to face with Plato's attempt to 
conceive how the very best may be made of a human mind 
and a human society. The education of the young by music 
and gymnastic now appears as a stage preliminary to true 



I4 Education in Plato s Time. 

education, a stage in which feelings, opinions and habits 
undergo a discipline necessary for social life, but in which 
there is no real attempt to open up to the mind the completest 
expansion of which it is capable. It falls into its place, to 
speak in modern language, as a scheme of prolonged primary 
education, on which, for all who may be capable of it, an 
elaborate university education is to be superadded. Like 
many things in later civilisation, the elaborate academic routine 
of the Alexandrian and the Greco-Roman time— and even that 
which survives to our own day— reads very like a misunder- 
standing of Plato's suggestions. It is impossible to suppose 
that these had no influence on a movement, which, beginning 
so soon after them, so strangely caricatures them. It is worth 
while to point out in a few words the gist of Plato's larger 
ideas of education. 



ii. The Higher Education in Plato's Republic. 

He has declared that there is no chance of a good time 
coming either to States or to mankind unless political power 
and the best and highest intelligence can somehow be brought 
together, to the exclusion of mere empirics from statesmanship, 
and mere theorists from philosophy. In suggesting how this 
may be done, how the forces of intelligence may be given due 
training and nurture, so that they may become useful instead 
of fatal to the State, he draws what may be called the general 
or ideal draft of a university education. By him, however, it is 
conceived as the combined education and experience of a life- 
time, and the attempt to reproduce it in the curriculum of a 
few years, while the mind is still immature, turns it into some- 
thing essentially different, though, of course, serviceable in its 
way. We must not treat such suggestions as Plato's literally, 
which involves pronouncing them impossible, but try to master 
their spirit. (See Bk. vil for details ; v and vi lead up to vn.) 






Education in Plato s Republic. 15 

The education of the young would leave the boy of 20 (or 
girl, for we know by this time that Plato's women are to share 
the education of the men) a hardy, active, and disciplined young 
creature, versed in the best literature and music, and fairly 
though slightly grounded in the mathematical sciences. From 
20 to 30, if worthy of further education, he w r as, while not by 
any means neglecting his military and official duties as a 
citizen, to enter upon the serious study of the whole range of 
sciences known in Plato's day, beginning with arithmetic or 
the nature of number, and proceeding, on a scale of increasing 
concreteness, through plane and spherical geometry, theoretical 
astronomy, and physical harmonics or acoustics. The method 
of study is to be specially directed to demonstrating as it were 
the "reign of law" — the general connection and affinity of 
these subject-matters with one another — and to test in the 
student the power of grasping such a connection. For a 
student who has the gift of apprehending a general connection 
is capable of the higher forms of knowledge ; but one who has 
not, is hopeless. And then, and not till then, those who have 
excelled in all these tests, both practical and theoretical, are 
from the age of thirty to that of thirty-five to be admitted to 
the highest and "most complete of all possible studies — a study 
such as philosophy Vcjuld be if it fulfilled its best aspirations as 
an insight into the mos: important matters of life, and know- 
ledge, and religion. The late age at which philosophy is to be 
approached is essential, in Plato's view, to ensure sufficient 
seriousness and steadiness in the student. For studies like 
vthese are apt to turn the head and shake the faith of boys and 
%irls just leaving school. It needs formed character and ex- 
perience of life to make them stages in the apprehension of 
truth instead of playthings in the game of disputation. From 
thirty-five to fifty they are again to busy themselves with the 
practical duties of public and citizen life, which, it must be 
borne in mind, have never been entirely broken off throughout 
their whole training except in the five years' interval after the 



1 6 Education in Plato s Time. 

age of thirty. And after the age of fifty they are still to take 
their share of public business, in its higher branches, but are to 
devote themselves in a large measure to the deepening and 
completion of their philosophical or religious insight. It is 
time for them to be sure in their own minds what makes life 
worth living, and to carry out this conviction with authority 
and efficiency in the varied tasks of government and ad- 
ministration. 

We must not take these as literal proposals, but we must 
feel what Plato means. He means that, in the sense of really 
doing the best with the human mind, education is a lifelong 
process, and has two inseparable sides. You cannot "com- 
plete your studies" at twenty-three or twenty-four 1 , and then, 
leaving study behind, pass on to practice. The best kind of 
knowledge — the knowledge of what makes life worth living — 
cannot be won except by a mind and character trained and 
matured in the school of life ; and again, no go^d work can be 
done in the arena of practice unless inspired by the highest 
spirit of study — the vital enthusiasm for truth and reality. 
Plato's formidable curriculum of the mathematical sciences — 
the mere prelude, as he carefully explains, to real knowledge — 
is for us simply a type of energetic determination to expand the 
intelligence by exercising it on the besi chat is known. He 
draws his suggestions from the intellectual experience of his 
day ; we, in appropriating their spirit, have before us the whole 
resources of our own. We shall however catch his intention 
much more by bringing the true student's enthusiasm to bear 
upon our life work, than by a vain effort to learn the whole 
circle of the sciences. Knowledge ceases to be knowledge 
when it loses unity and relevance. 

1 "The truth is that at twenty-four no man has done more than acquire 
the rudiments of his education." Anthony Trollope, in The Clavaings. 
Of course the very nature of true education as here suggested makes it 
necessary that school and college training should not be too much pro- 
longed. The higher education demands responsibility and independence. 



Education after Plato s Time. 17 

3. EDUCATION AFTER PLATO'S TIME. 

We admitted above that the games and sports of the young 
among the Greeks had not the aspect of self-government and 
self-management which we are proud of in English school-life. 
Perhaps the discipline of the youths at Sparta, which has been 
compared to a sort of monitorial system, should be cited as an 
exception to this rule. But a consequence of some importance, 
in its bearing on the higher education, follows from this general 
state of things. We find in Greece no trace of the divorce 
between school-life and the life of home and of ordinary 
society which recent literature accents so strongly in England. 
The public school boy, we seem to be taught to-day, is a 
creature by himself, living in a world of his own, with no share 
in the manners, habits, or interests of the mature society around 
him. And allowing for caricature, there is yet too great truth 
in the picture. But the Greek, or at least the Athenian boy, 
was a product of home training, and the day school. Out of 
school hours, or in the leisure intervals at the gymnastic 
master's, he associated, on terms of due courtesy and subordi- 
nation, with his older relatives and with his father's friends. 
There is no trace of his having been absorbed by a self- 
contained world of school interests and ambitions, and by a 
fierce esprit de corps colouring his entire view of life. As his 
intelligence expanded, questions of the public welfare and the 
topics and problems of the day must have come within his 
reach by natural growth and intercourse. The picture which 
Plato has drawn of Socrates conversing with the boys in the 
presence of their friends and relations represents no specific 
matter of fact, but the tone of these imaginary conversations 
cannot be wholly fictitious. It is the tone of eager-minded 
lads, pleased and proud to be admitted to the conversation of 
distinguished men, and to learn something of the ethical 
problems of the day. 



1 8 Education after Plato s Time. 

It was out of this intercourse with older men that the 
higher education at Athens grew up by gradual organisation. 
"Please let these young men have the benefit of your society" 
is the request addressed to Socrates on behalf of his sons by 
the venerable merchant prince in the Republic. Socrates as 
we know took no payment for his social intercourse and con- 
versation; other teachers and lecturers, whose work was no 
doubt more systematic in its form, initiated the habit of taking 
fees and enrolling their pupils for a more or less definite 
course. The whole arrangement was absolutely free and unor- 
ganised. A young man might if he pleased attend a course 
on geometry, or military tactics, or on ethical and philosophical 
problems, or on the duties of citizenship. There seem to have 
been two great points which distinguish the "sophists," or 
travelling professors of ancient Greece, from University 
teachers and University Extension lecturers of the present 
day, besides the fact that the "sophists" were appointed by 
no one and belonged to no institution, but simply opened a 
room and gave their lectures, as e.g. Auguste Comte did in Paris 
when a young and unknown man. First, they were not as a 
rule citizens of the state in which they taught. Hardly any 
famous "sophist" was an Athenian citizen. There was nothing 
morally wrong in this ; but it affected their point of view. It 
is difficult to lecture on ethical and political subjects to an 
audience whose life you do not thoroughly share ; and the best 
men to-day will sometimes refuse to attempt it. A modern 
University teacher, on the other hand, is or may be a citizen 
of the citizens, the very incarnation of the national and muni- 
cipal spirit. Socrates, who had fought more than one severe 
campaign for his country, may well have found it difficult to 
believe that those brilliant aliens were sound guides for the 
Athenian youth. And secondly, the absence of a classical 
tradition in science and philosophy made a great difference. A 
lecturer to-day has done much if he has animated his audience 
to appreciate any one of the great standard writers of the 



Education after ^Plato's Time. 19 

world. There is a great deal known, we may say, of which we 
may be confident that it is worth knowing. And in fact, an 
average lecturer seldom delivers himself of a brand-new system, 
and would rightly be suspected if he did. He is but a show- 
man in the great museum of science and letters. But the 
" sophist" of Socrates' day had no such firm foundation to rely 
upon. He taught for the most part a kind of general culture, 
and although if he was a great man, his ideas might be valuable 
and original, if yet he was not, they could hardly avoid being 
superficial and commonplace. 

Such, however, was the form assumed by the higher educa- 
tion at Athens in the lifetime of Socrates, that is, in the latter 
half of the 5th century and before the beginning of Plato's 
literary activity. It was an outgrowth of the free intellectual 
intercourse of young men with their seniors, and gradually 
assumed the shape of regular lectures or conversational teach- 
ing, for which a fee was paid, wholly and entirely by private 
arrangement. 

Plato's lifetime forms a convenient era from which to date 
the introduction of more systematic organisation ; and this for 
two reasons. First, we have seen that Plato has handed down 
the earliest ideal sketch of an education, intended to express 
the needs of the human mind, and their satisfaction, in the 
fullest possible form. Not but what the air was full of educa- 
tional schemes and theories, outside and independent of Plato's 
writings. But we may take Plato's as a type of the rest, and 
as the most influential and comprehensive. Secondly, it was 
Plato's bequest which first instituted an educational endow- 
ment, by leaving certain pieces of land, at the place where he 
was accustomed to teach, to a successor whom he named. 
His example was followed by others, and a set of endowed 
day-colleges thus grew up at Athens. 

By the side of the philosophical schools which were thus 
passing into endowed colleges, another subject was claiming 
an important place. This was Rhetoric, the art of convincing 

2 — 2 



20 Education after Plato's Time. 

expression: the opposite and complementary side of that "art 
of discourse" which had been understood to include the 
reasonings of Socrates. Of course the importance of Rhetoric 
is connected with the part played by public speaking in Greek 
life ; but it is not so far removed as we might think from what 
is acquired at our Universities to-day. The actual knowledge 
which men attain in their University course is hardly their 
principal or permanent possession, excepting when it leads up 
to a student's life. What they are expected to have acquired 
and to retain is a power of mastering a subject, and giving a 
clear and reasonable account of it, treating its parts in their 
proper order, with due subordination to the whole, and with a 
certain sense and judgment. To gain this power they must 
have pursued a study which is by no means purely verbal, and 
an ancient rhetorician would not have admitted that Rhetoric, 
the art of order and suitable expression, was a mere matter of 
words. To us the study of Rhetoric may seem to set the 
shadow before the substance ; but after all, if we thus put the 
objection at its strongest, we may recall that most of us have 
spent a great part of our educational life in the practice of 
" composition." 

This art of expression, then, seems to have worked its way 
into the educational course as a stage subsequent to grammar, 
and supplanting the older Music or lyre-playing. And the 
demand expressed by Plato, and no doubt by many others, 
for an ampler grasp of organised knowledge, seems to have 
resulted in the recognition of a University course bearing a 
strange relation to his scheme of higher education. The 
names of the arts and sciences which formed the regular 
curriculum in Graeco-Roman times are given as Grammar, 
Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astrology 1 , Music. 
The three first of these studies form the Trivium, the four last 
the Quadrivium, of mediaeval education. Looking at this list, 

1 Including I presume what was known of Astronomy, but very 
possibly with unscientific additions. 



Education after Plato's Time. 21 

which represents the educational tradition, as we may say, of 
the civilised world, we cannot but observe that the last four 
sciences correspond exactly to the mathematical sciences of 
Plato's higher education, if we divide geometry into plane and 
solid geometry, and take music, as its position suggests, to be 
the equivalent rather of harmonics or acoustics than of playing 
the lyre or singing. Rhetoric, as we saw, has thrust itself in 
after Grammar or letters, which is still considered as the natural 
education for a boy. And Dialectic 1 , which in Plato's theory 
was to be the crown and climax of all studies, as philosophy and 
religious insight at their best, has found a place as a continua- 
tion of Rhetoric, presumably consisting in the study of certain 
trivial elements of formal logic. The entire course might 
occupy from five to eight years ; but ordinary students probably 
took little beyond grammar and rhetoric, and spent a compara- 
tively short time at the University. Under the Roman Empire 
professors were paid by the Emperors, and practically appointed 
by the Roman governor. Education had now become a train- 
ing chiefly in Rhetoric and philosophical generalities for the 
gentlemen of the Roman Empire, and the Ephebi had become 
in effect an undergraduate body, with all the customs and 
mannerisms of such a body, to which aliens who visited the 
University were admitted. We still hear nothing of foreign 
languages being taught at Athens, though the Romans had 
their sons taught Greek by means of Greek teachers. 

Small as the positive value of such a course 2 may seem to 
us to have been, it preserved to the modern world that com- 
prehensive idea, of an intelligence at home in the whole sphere 
of knowledge, which Plato's genius had devised. It preserved 
it in a shrivelled and distorted form ■ but this, like many ideas 

1 The name "Dialectica" came to the Middle Age through Latin writers 
from the Stoics. It indicated, not the philosophy foreshadowed by Plato, 
but a Logic derived at secondhand from Aristotle. 

2 The mathematical sciences indeed long retained their vitality, but it 
may be doubted whether ordinary students profited by this. 



22 Education after Plato's Time. 

of the ancient world, seems capable of renewed life when 
brought in contact with modern conditions. On the other 
hand, the education of the young as described in Plato's 
Republic is a monument of the actual life of a great people in 
the day of their greatness, and the simple principle which 
Plato shows to underlie it — the principle of the growth and 
nourishment of a living creature, not a hody plus a mind, but a 
unity in which the physical life passes upwards into the mental 
— can never cease to be significant. 

4. THE OPENING ARGUMENT OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Book I of the Republic discusses first the nature of justice 
or morality, and then, as an extension of this discussion, how 
far it is essential to human life. The arguments, though highly 
suggestive, turn largely on the meanings of words, and the 
important idea that justice or morality has to do with men's 
obligations in society is put in the mouth of the disputant who 
denies that it is the true principle of human life. 

In the opening of Book II Glaucon expresses discontent at 
the generalities which have been accepted as decisive in favour 
of justice in Book I, and, in order to draw a refutation, restates 
the opposite case from the point of view of those who say that 
justice or morality is purely artificial, a restraint submitted to 
for selfish ends, and that man's true inward impulse is always 
towards the egoistic and immoral course. Adeimantus chimes 
in, for the same purpose, by the supplementary observation 
that the ordinary preachers of morality are practically in agree- 
ment with its enemies, seeing that they lay all the stress of the 
argument not on goodness, but on the rewards which follow 
a reputation for it ; as if goodness in itself were not defensible. 
Our text begins with the closing paragraphs of Adeimantus' 
speech. 

It should be noted that Socrates, in attempting a more 
thorough answer than that of Book I, accepts the challenge of 



The opening argument of the Republic. 23 

Thrasymachus, repeated by Glaucon, and sets to work to 
examine justice or morality as a social phenomenon, the ulti- 
mate question being, whether, because it is certainly "con- 
ventional," it need therefore be artificial and unreal, or, m 
short other than "natural." It should be remembered that 
even 'in Books II— IV the "social" explanation of morality 
consists in treating the Commonwealth as a structure in which 
the true inwardness of the human soul is up to a certain point 
revealed. It does not rest on any such idea as that the greatest 
number of persons is always to be most regarded in moral 
action. And in the later books of the Republic, when the 
nature of the mind and that which will satisfy it is more pro- 
foundly examined, we see more and more clearly that there are 
other tests of what is highest in human nature than the mere 
fact of fitness for living in a given society, though this remains 
a necessary condition of the best life. 



THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 
Books II 366— end of IV. 



26 

NOTE ON THE FORM OF THE "DIALOGUES' 5 AND 
THEIR RELATION TO SOCRATES. 

Plato's genuine writings are in the form of conversations or "dialogues/' 
in nearly all of which Socrates is represented as taking part, generally as the 
principal speaker. The other speakers are also, as a rule, given the names 
of real persons who might have been present, and in some cases probably 
were present, at such conversations as Plato professes to report. Socrates 
we must remember was put to death in 399 B.C. when Plato was only 
twenty-nine. This fact, combined with the obvious growth of original and 
constructive views throughout the succession of Plato's writings, is enough 
to show that Socrates' utterances in the dialogues are not to be treated as 
the expressions of ideas entertained by the real Socrates. On the other 
hand, the nature of Plato's loyalty to Socrates, and the character of the 
changes of view which his writings display, forbid us to suppose that 
Socrates' ideas in the dialogues were no more those of Plato, than the ideas 
of a character in a modern novel need be those of the author. In general 
it is pretty plain that Plato started from Socrates' method and principles. 
and while constructing a vast and original fabric of thought, believed 
himself on the whole to be loyal to the impulse and character of Socrates. 
Roughly speaking we may say that the earlier dialogues are ironical, 
tentative, and suggestive, but affirm no positive conclusion; and in this 
sense resemble what we are told of Socrates' way of thinking. The first 
book of the Republic, taken by itself, is a good example of a "Socratic" 
dialogue. Other dialogues again maintain through the mouth of Socrates 
a serious and positive thesis, as is the case in the main body of the Republic, 
and here we feel that we are losing hold of the real Socrates as he was " in 
the flesh." Some moreover of the latest dialogues are almost pure ex- 
position, and drop out the person of Socrates altogether. Thus the 
conversational form of Plato's writings, though other writers of the time 
adopted it, seems connected with his admiration for Socrates, who, like the 
founder of Christianity, taught only by the living word, and left no written 
memorials. It was also a natural expression for Plato's tentative and 
undogmatic speculation, and it appeared to him to be the truest vehicle of 
genuine thinking, as the inward question and answer by which the mind 
advances from point to point. 

The beautiful opening of Book I should be referred to for the place and 
persons of the dialogue. Glaucon and Adeimantus are Plato's brothers. 
The argument of the first book has been mainly conducted by other 
speakers. 



27 



BOOK II 



Argument. 366 b— 367 e. Conclusion of the appeal of 
Adeimantus for a deeper explanation and defence of morality 
urging that its popular advocates are really on the same ground 
with its antagonists; that is to say, do not expound it as the one 
inherent principle of life, but as a course of conduct which is the 
best policy; in short, as a means to an end other than itself 

What reason then remains for which we should prefer 366 b 
justice to the extreme of injustice? which if we take to 
ourselves with counterfeit propriety, we shall succeed to our 
heart's desire before God and before man, in life and after 
death; so runs the argument of our leaders, one and all. 
What possibility is there, Socrates, in view of that which has 
just been spoken, that anyone should be content to honour 
justice, who possesses any force of mind or of money, of body c 
or of birth, instead of laughing to hear it commended? For 
indeed if there is anyone who is able to demonstrate the falsity 
of what we have spoken, and who has seen sufficmgly that 
justice is best, we must suppose that he has a great leniency, 
and is not angry with the unjust ; being aware that except one 
keep himself from injustice through a godlike innate repug- 
nance, or by the attainment of real understanding, no man is d 
just of his own will ; but it is either cowardice or age or some 



28 The Republic of Plato. 

other infirmity that makes men censure the injustice which they 
lack force to do. Evidently it is so; for the first of them to 
get power is the first to commit injustice, and that as much 
as he can. 

And the reason of it all is that and nothing else, from which 
our whole argument with you, Socrates, took its rise — my 
brother's here and mine. We are surprised, my dear Sir, we 
e said, that among you all who profess to be champions of 
righteousness, beginning from the heroes of old, as far as their 
ideas are recorded, down to the men of to-day, no one has ever 
yet censured wrong-doing nor lauded righteousness for any- 
thing but the reputation and the honour and the profit which 
arise from either; but what each of them is in its own potency, 
within the mind of the possessor 1 , unknown to God or man, no 
one ever yet either through poetry or through everyday speech 
has sufficingly pursued the enquiry, proving that the former is 
the greatest of all evils which a mind can entertain within 
367 a itself, and righteousness the greatest good. For if this had 
been the doctrine of you all from the beginning, and you had 
been urging it upon us from our youth up, we should not 
now have been guarding one another from evildoing, but every 
man would himself have been his own guardian, fearing, should 
he do injustice, that the greatest of all evils would dwell with 
him. All that 2 , Socrates, and perhaps more than that would 
Thrasymachus tell you, and others too, no doubt, about justice 
and injustice, distorting their true potency — grossly, as it seems 
b to me; but I, for I need not hide anything from you, am 
putting the case with my whole force, because I want to hear 
you maintain the opposite. Do not therefore merely demon- 
strate to us in your argument, that justice is better than 
injustice, but show us too what it is that each of them does 
to its possessor whereby itself and for its own sake the one 

1 See 443 for the fulfilment of this suggestion. 

2 Viz., about the extraneous motives to justice and injustice. 



Book II. 29 

is an evil, and the other a good; and strike out their repu- 
tations, as Glaucon demanded. For if you do not strike out 
the true reputation on either side, and attach the false 1 , we 
shall say that it is not justice which you are praising, but its 
appearance, and not injustice that you are blaming, but its c 
appearance; and that your advice is, to be unjust but secret; 
and that you agree with Thrasymachus, that Justice is another's 
good 2 , the interest of the stronger, whereas Injustice is ex- 
pedient and profitable for oneself, but against the interest of 
the weaker. Since, then, you have admitted that Justice is 
one of the greatest goods 3 , which are worth possessing both 
for their results, and also far more for what they are in them- 
selves, like sight and hearing, consciousness, and health too, 
and all other goods that are profitable in their own nature 
and not in mere appearance, so now we want you to praise d 
this very quality in Justice, whereby itself, and by reason of 
itself, advantages its possessor, and in the same way Injustice 
harms him. And leave it to others to extol rewards and appear- 

1 To comply wholly with this requirement would involve pessimism, 
as it would mean that goodness is a feeble thing, unable to win acknow- 
ledgement in the world. This is the absolute opposite of Plato's conviction. 
Goodness for him is simply the life of the soul in as far as it really lives. 
But it is still the life of the soul, " eternal life," even if and when it does 
fail to win acknowledgement in the world, cf. 361 e. The very fact that 
Plato constructs a social whole as the true arena of Goodness shows that 
he does not in principle dissociate it from outer recognition. On the 
contrary, the whole social scheme is a symbol of it, see 443 below. 

2 The doctrine bears a misleading verbal resemblance to our "altruism." 
It was criticised in Bk. I. Its point is in the assumption that all men's 
interests conflict, and that every man pursues his interest to the uttermost of 
his power. "Justice," then, is the interest of "another," viz. the "stronger," 
say the ruling power in a state, as enforced ztpon the "weaker," or subject 
class. " Injustice" is the pursuit of one's own interest, which by the hypothesis 
is opposed to some one else's ; and one can only achieve it in as far as some 
one else is " the weaker." If the subject evades the law, made in the ruler's 
interest, the ruler is "the weaker" so far as the evasion is successful. 

3 See beginning of Book II. 



30 The Republic of Plato. 

ances. For all the others I can tolerate when they praise 
Justice and censure Injustice in this way, glorifying and vilify- 
ing the appearances and reputations which attach to them; but 
you I will not, unless you bid me, because you have spent your 
E whole life long in this study and no other. 



Argument. 367 E — 369 B. Transition from the individual 
by himself to the individual as me??iber of a commonwealth, in 
which context the traits of the mind are to be read more com- 
pletely and on a larger scale. For example, what may have 
remained an undeveloped impulse in a particular person 's mind — 
say religion, art, education, industrial capacity, or sport, will be 
revealed at once as a factor in human life when we turn our 
eyes upon society, in which the t?-ait in question is vouched for by 
huge complexes of institutions. 

Now I had always admired the nature of Glaucon and 
Adeimantus, but when I heard them on this occasion I was 
really quite delighted and I said : That was very appropriate 
368 a to you, you sons of him who is named in the ode, that begin- 
ning of the verses which Glaucon's admirer composed when 
you distinguished yourselves in the battle at Megara, calling you 

Sons of Ariston, godlike offspring of an illustrious sire. 

This, my friends, seems to me to be very fitting ; for it is 
something really godlike that has come to you, if you are not 
convinced that injustice is a better thing than justice, when 
you are so well able to speak on its behalf. Yet you appear to 
b me in good truth not to be so convinced. I am judging from 
the rest of your behaviour, since from your actual words I 
should have doubted you ; but the more I believe in you, the 
more am I at a loss what to do; for on the one hand, I have no 
way of coming to the rescue; I seem to myself to be powerless; 
and the proof is, that what I said to Thrasymachus, thinking 



Book II. 31 

it a demonstration that justice is a better thing than injustice, 
you have not accepted from me; on the other hand I do not 
see how I am not to come to the rescue ; for I fear lest it be c 
an actual sin for one being present when justice is disparaged, 
to give in and not come to her aid, so long as breath is in 
him, and he is able to utter a sound. The right course is, then, 
to aid her as best I can. 

So Glaucon and the rest besought me with all urgency to 
come to the rescue and not let the argument drop, but to 
investigate both what each of them is, and which way the truth 
lies about their advantageousness. And I said what I thought 
as follows. — It is clear to me that the problem we are attack- 
ing is no trifle, but demands a keen eye. Now, as we are not d 
expert, I think we might make our enquiry into it in some 
such way as this. 

If it had been enjoined upon people who were not very 
keen-sighted to read some small letters 1 a long way off, and 
then one had found out that there are the same letters else- 
where of larger size, and on a larger field, it would have been 
thought a lucky find, I imagine, to begin by reading the latter, 
and then to study the smaller letters, and see if they turned out 
the same. 

Certainly, said Adeimantus ; but, Socrates, what do you see e 
of this kind in the enquiry respecting justice? 

I will tell you, I replied. Justice, we should say, may be of 
one man, or it may be of a whole city 2 ? 

Yes, he replied. 

Is not a city larger than one man ? 

It is larger, he said. 

1 For a development of this illustration, see 402. We shall lose its 
meaning if we do not bear in mind the course of the thought as indicated 
there and throughout. The point is, that the same qualifies stand written 
in individual and in social life, and to separate the study of them is 
impossible — not that social life exists somewhere else than in individual life. 

2 I.e. simply we may speak of a man as just, or of a city as just. 



32 The Republic of Plato. 

Perhaps there may be more justice 1 in the larger whole, and 

369 a easier to discern. So, if you are willing, let us begin with the 

cities, and enquire what it is like in them ; and then according 

to our plan let us examine it in the single individual, studying 

the resemblance of the greater in the form of the less 2 . 

Why, he answered, I think you say well. 

Well then, I continued, if we were to observe in thought 
the genesis of a city, should we at the same time see the 
genesis of its justice and of its injustice? 

Perhaps so, he said. 
b So when it is done we may hope to see more readily what 
we are looking for ? 

Much more. 

Then do you think we should try and accomplish it ? for I 
fancy it is no small labour; so please consider. 

Oh, we have considered, cried Adeimantus; pray do not 
waste time. 



Argument. 369 b — 372 c. The economic genesis of a com- 
monwealth, that is, the sketch in bare outline of what must come 
to pass and go on in order that a cojnmonwealth, as understood 
in western civilisation, may hold together. The growth of peoples 
through each stage of kinship a?id pre-industrial conditions would 
not here be to the poi?it. Plato ivas quite aware that there had 
been such a growth. The account here given is summarised in 

1 In Plato's deepest arguments there is apt to be a touch of humour or 
irony. Here his apparent naivete tends to make us smile, for our first 
thought is " Surely social or general morality is far below that of a good 
man," and it is only perhaps after following his argument to the end that 
we see the true force of his appeal, viz., that apart from the social whole, 
moral qualities can neither be manifested nor explained. There is or may 
be more injustice in a city than in an individual, as well as more justice. 

2 I.e. trying to recognise in the less (the individual) the moral qualities 
with which we have made ourselves familiar in the greater (social life and 
structure). 



Book II. 33 

Aristotle's epigram : " The State arises for the sake of life ', but is 
for the sake of good life." 

Now a city, I began, comes into being, as I suppose, 
because each of us is not self-sufficing, but is deficient in many 
ways 1 . Or what cause but this, do you think, can set up 
a city? 

None but this, he replied. 

When each of us calls in another to supply his need of C 
one thing, and yet another to supply his need of another 
thing, the needs being manifold, we thus having collected 
associates and co-operators into a single place of habitation 
give the resulting group of neighbours the appellation of 
"city 2 ." Is this it? 

Just so. 

Then one gives a share to another, if he does so, or accepts 
a share from him, because he believes that this is best for 
himself. 

Certainly. 

Come then, I said, let us make a city from the beginning, 
in our speculation. And what will make it, as it seems, is our 
need. 

Undoubtedly. 

But the first and greatest of our needs is the supply of d 
sustenance with a view to existence and life. 



1 We have needs both bodily and spiritual (cf. 519 E, 590 c and d) 
which are rooted in our human nature, and which only society can supply. 
How far and in what sense man is or ought to be self-sufficing is a radical 
problem of ethics and religion. 

- Cf. Rousseau, "It is the houses that make the town, but the citizens 
that make the city." It would not be true to say that " Polis" to a Greek 
never meant a town, or that town life was not a predominant feature in 
Greek civilisation. Still, the actual Greek "Poleis" or "City-states" were 
districts like Swiss Cantons, containing a great deal of pure country, and 

B. 



34 The Republic of Plato. 

Quite so. 

Second comes the need of housing, and third that of 
clothing and the like. 

That is so. 

Come now, I said, how is the city to suffice for all this 
supply ? Will it be by one man being a farmer, another a 
builder, and a third a weaver ? Or shall we add to these 
a shoemaker too, or some more of those who attend to our 
personal wants? 

That is the way, he answered. 

Then the minimum 1 city will be of four or five men ? 
e So it seems. 

What then? Is each one of these to contribute his own 
product 2 as common to all ; for instance, the farmer, being one 
person, to prepare corn for four, and devote fourfold time and 
labour to the provision of corn, and share it with the others? 
Or is he to disregard the rest, and provide for himself alone the 
370 a fourth part of that corn in the fourth part of his time, and of 
the other three parts to spend one in providing himself with 
a house, another on clothing, and the third on shoes, and save 
himself the trouble of sharing with others by doing his own 
business 3 for his own purposes ? 

And Adeimantus said, Why, Socrates, probably the com- 
mon way is more convenient than the other. 

I should not be surprised, I answered him. For I myself 



many country villages and residences. They were thought of rather as 
politically centering in towns than as consisting wholly of towns and 
townsmen. 

1 Minimum both in quantity and quality — supplying only the bare needs 
of life. 

2 The same Greek word serves for the function and the product — the 
"work." 

3 The phrase "doing his own business," which is the key of the whole 
political and ethical structure of the Republic, is here applied to a way of 
life just the opposite of what it afterwards comes to mean. 



Book II 35 

too notice, now that you have suggested it 1 , that, to begin with, 
people are born 2 not quite like each other, but with different b 
natures, one apt for one function, and another for another. Do 
not you think so ? 

I do. 

Well then ; would it be the most effective way for one man 
to ply several arts, or one man one art ? 

One man one art is best, he said. 

Moreover I imagine this to be quite clear ; that if one lets 
slip the right moment for any work, it is ruined. 

Clearly. 

For, I suppose, that which has to be done will not await 
the leisure of him who has to do it, but it is needful for the 
doer to attend upon what is being done, and treat it as no 
secondary matter, 

Inevitably. c 

It follows, then, that every kind of product is produced in 
greater number and better and more easily when one man does 
one thing according to his natural powers and at the right 
moment, being at leisure from all else. 

Unquestionably. 

Then, Adeimantus, more than four citizens are required for 
the supply of what we were speaking about ; for the farmer, as 
it seems, will not himself make his own plough, if it is to be 
a good one, nor his mattock nor other farming implements • d 



1 It is, of course, Socrates' fun to attribute to Adeimantus' suggestion 
the rather subtle remark he is about to make. 

2 The verb "are born" or "grow" retains in Greek its close connection 
with the substantive which we render " nature." Plato's language throughout 
the Republic bears the stamp of his idea that man forms the social whole 
by a growth or growing which is his "nature," as it is the nature of a plant 
to bear flowers and fruit. Thus the economic "division of labour" which 
he is about to describe is for him not a mere rule of expediency, but an 
elementary expression of man's tendency to be a member in an organism, 
which in its highest form is the law of righteousness. See 443. 



36 The Republic of Plato. 

nor the builder his tools, and he again needs many ; and so too 
the weaver and the shoemaker. 

True. 

So carpenters and smiths and many other artificers, be- 
coming associates in our little city, will make it of some size. 

No doubt they will. 

Still it will not yet be quite a large one, even if we should 

add to them oxherds and shepherds and other kinds of herds- 

E men, that the farmer may have oxen for ploughing, and the 

builders, as well as farmers, may have cattle to use for draft l , 

and weavers and shoemakers may have hides and wool. 

Nor again, he replied, can it be quite a small city if it con- 
tain all these. 

Moreover, I continued, it is pretty nearly impossible to 
plant the city itself in a region where it will want no imports. 

Quite impossible. 

Then there will be need of others too who will bring to it 
from another city what it requires. 

There will. 

But if the intermediary go empty-handed, taking with him 
371 a nothing that those others want, from whom our citizens obtain 
what they need, he will come back empty ; will he not? 

I imagine so. 

Then they must produce at home not merely sufficient for 
themselves, but in quality and quantity adapted to those on 
whom they depend. 

They must. 

Then we require for our city yet more of the farmers and of 
the other kinds of workers. 

Quite so. 

And besides we need the intermediaries who will import 
and export the different kinds of things ; and these are 
merchants, are they not ? 

Yes. 

1 n.b. not yet for food. 



Book II. 37 

Then we shall want merchants too. 
Certainly. 

And if commerce is carried on by sea, a good number of b 
others will be wanted, who have skill in the industry of the sea. 
Yes, a good number. 

And now within the city itself— how will they share with 
one another what each set of them produces? For it was 
actually in framing an association for this purpose that we 
established our city. 

Obviously, he said, they will do it by buying and selling. 
Then out of this will arise a market and a coinage by way 
of token for the purpose of exchange. 

That is so. m c 

Then if the farmer, or one of the other workmen, brings 
some of his produce to the market, and gets there at a different 
time from those who want to exchange their goods for his, is 
he to give up his own work and sit in the market ? 

By no means, was the answer ; the fact is that there are 
people who notice this want and set themselves to the service 
in question, in well-managed states pretty much the weakest in 
body and incapable of discharging any other function 1 . For 
they have to wait on the spot in the market, and take things 
in exchange against money for those who want to sell 2 , and D 
exchange them away again for money to those who want 

to buy. 

This want then creates shopkeepers in our city. Or is not 
"shopkeeper" the name we give to those who do the service 

i A combination of aristocratic prejudice, mischievous fun, and social 
insight. To the Greek aristocrat the shopkeeper was a sedentary, unathletic 
and\mwarlike person; while the Greek thinker suspected him the 
middleman, of somehow getting wealth without producing anything. I his 
is an anticipation of modern problems. Plato however, in the present 
passage, clearly indicates the shopkeeper's function and the public need 
of it. Cf. 370 B with the sentence "Then if the farmer..." 

- I.e. buy things from those who want to sell. 



3 8 The Republic of Plato. 

of buying and selling, seated in the market, while those who 
travel to other states we call merchants 1 ? 

Quite so. 

Then further, as I imagine, there is another class of serving 

men 2 , who in their intelligence are not quite capable of an 

e associate's part, but have bodily strength equal to hard work ; 

they, selling the service of their strength, and calling its price 

hire, take as I imagine the name "workers for hire 3 ." 

That is it. 

Then workers for hire, too, belong to the equipment of a 
city. 

I think so. 

Well then, Adeimantus, is our city by now so far grown as 
to be complete ? 

Perhaps so. 

Wherever then in it will its justice and injustice be; and 
implanted along with which of the features which we have 
scrutinised ? 
372 a I for my part, Socrates, he replied, have not a notion, 
unless it be in some dealings of these very persons with one 
another. 

Why, I said, I daresay you are right ; at any rate we must 
pursue our enquiry and not shrink from it. First then let us 
consider what sort of life they will lead who have so been 

1 The word is "emporos," "a passenger," probably with the idea of 
supercargo "Traveller" might be a fair equivalent. Our word emporium 
is derived from it. 

2 This term, ministers, messengers, or intermediaries (diaconoi, from 
which our "deacon" is derived) does not imply slavery, but seems to be 
used with more or less intention for kinds of work which Plato thinks 
comparatively unskilled. We have no mention of slaves so far ; their 
presence seems to be presupposed later on. 

_ 3 The Greek word might apply to "wage-earners." But Plato seems 
intentionally to separate these " unskilled labourers " who have only strength 
to sell, from artisans and mechanics. He is thinking perhaps of porters 
and the like, who are hired in the street for casual jobs. 



Book II. 39 

furnished forth. I suppose they will be producing corn and 
wine and clothing and shoes, and will have built themselves 
houses ; and they will work in summer as a rule lightly clad 
and barefoot and in winter with good clothes and shoes ? And r> 
for food they will prepare meal from the barley, and flour from 
the wheat, baking some and kneading some 1 , and serve up 
splendid scones and loaves upon rushes or clean leaves, lying 
on couches spread of yew and myrtle boughs; so they will 
feast, they and their children, drinking of their wine, garlanded 
and singing praises of the gods, living pleasantly together, not c 
begetting children beyond their means, dreading poverty or 



Argument. 372 c — 376 e. Civilisation, war, the need of 
guardians and their qualities ; the knowledge of good and evil. 

And Glaucon broke in: You seem to be setting the men to 
banquet on dry bread 3 . 

You are quite right, I answered. I forgot that they will be 

1 I am aware that this gives no clear distinction. I imagine the words 
to point in some way to the difference between bread and scones or damper. 

2 War, see below 373 e, is held to arise from enlargement of territory. 
To appreciate the double-edged humour of the above picture, we must bear 
in mind that the "return to Nature" found favour with theorists then as in 
Rousseau's day and now. Plato, in the innocence which he makes Socrates 
assume, is amusing himself at the expense both of those who think that 
civilisation consists in luxury and artificial life (see just below), and of those 
who think it a disease which can be cured by vegetable diet and a life of 
patriarchal routine. He does not find righteousness in a state of innocence ; 
it arises, in his construction, along with war and the evils of an advanced 
society. 

3 Lit. "without a relish." The Athenians eat their fish and other 
delicacies to a great extent as a condiment or relish to their bread, 
something like hors d'ceuvres. Only a gourmand, according to Greek ideas, 
would eat hors d'ceuvres or savouries without bread, but it would be a 
poor meal to have dry bread by itself. In what follows, Socrates is poking 
fun at the young man about town. 



4<D The Republic of Plato. 

having relishes ; salt, no doubt, and olives, and cheese, and 
they will boil truffles, and cabbage, as people do in the country. 
And we shall set before them a dessert of figs, and pease and 
d beans ; and they will parch myrtle berries and beech nuts at 
the fire, taking their wine moderately; and so passing their life 
in peace, with good health, they will die most likely at a great 
age and hand on such another life to their children. 

But, Socrates, he cried, if you had been establishing a city 
of pigs 1 , is not this just what you would have fed them on? 

Why, Glaucon, I said, how ought they to live ? 

As respectable people do, he answered ; if they are to be 
comfortable they must have sofas to lie on and tables to dine 
e off and savouries and dessert, just as we have to-day. 

Well, I see, said I; it appears that we are not merely 
studying a city in its way of coming to be, but something more, 
that is, a city of luxury. And very likely it is just as well ; for 
by examining even such a one we shall perhaps discern justice 
and injustice, and how they become implanted in states. Now 
I think that the genuine state is that which we have described, 
being, so to speak, a healthy one 2 ; but if you like to go on 
and look at a city in a fever, there is nothing to prevent you. 
For it seems that there are people who will not be satisfied 
with these arrangements nor with this way of life ; but there 
373 a will be sofas too, and tables and all the household apparatus, 
and relishes no doubt, and unguents and perfumes, and 
courtesans and confectionery, a great variety of each ; and 

1 See note i on p. 39. Plato enjoys the horror of the young 
plutocrat, but he has also a meaning in letting him speak in this way 
of the Utopias of the time, as described, e.g. probably by Antisthenes 
the Cynic. Voltaire said of Rousseau in a similar sense, " He makes one 
long to go on all fours." It is in the State which has purged itself (399 e), 
not in the State which has never known evil, that Plato finds righteousness. 

9 Still with a double meaning. It might be innocent in comparison 
with a more artificial society, but the full expression of the human mind 
was not to be found in it. The form of transition "by examining even such 
a one," as if it were a pis aller to go on to the "city of luxury," is ironical. 



Book II 41 

moreover the supply which first we spoke of must no longer be 
taken in its simple 1 forms — houses, clothing, shoes — but we 
must set to work the art of painting and procure gold and 
ivory 2 and all that kind of thing. Must we not ? b 

Yes, he said. 

Then again we must make the city larger ? For the healthy 
city as we described it will no longer be sufficient, but it must 
be swelled out with masses and multitudes, which are in cities 
for purposes outside the necessary 1 ; for example hunters of all 
kinds and all the imitative artists 3 , many of them working in 
form and colour, and many dealing with music and letters, 
such as poets and their subordinates, reciters, actors, dancers, 
contractors 4 ; and makers of all sorts of apparatus, including c 
that of women's toilet 5 . And we shall want more personal 

1 "Simple" or "necessary"; a word with very various and subtle 
associations in Greek ; usually with an echo of the allusion to means as 
contrasted with end> and so suggesting a minimum — what you cannot do 
without. It may have a disparaging tone or the reverse. 

2 The great gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") statues of Pheidias the 
Athenian sculptor were the most costly marvels of Greek art in the century 
before Plato wrote, against which he is to some extent in reaction. They 
were of delicate structure besides being of precious materials ; and no 
fragment remains from which we can tell what they looked like. 

3 Plato has a mischievous enjoyment in this classification. Prima facie, 
"hunters" means the people who catch game and fish for the rich men's 
dinner; but there is a second intention. For elsewhere Plato includes 
under the term hunters such "hunters of men" as pirates, thieves, lawyers, 
rhetoricians and popular lecturers, with a reference partly to their making 
profit out of men, partly to their "capturing" their minds by one-sided 
persuasion. Plato ranks the "imitative" artist, lit. "imitator," along with 
the hunter, pretending to regard him as trying to take people in by likenesses 
instead of real things. Plato's true attitude to art is a very large and 
difficult subject. But in moments of antagonism he ranks the "imitators" 
as frauds with the "hunters" as cheats. They are mostly turned out of 
the city again later on. 

4 Having to do with the production of plays. 

5 Not grammatically under the head of imitation, but Plato means it to 
be analogous. 



42 The Republic of Plato. 

servants. Or do you not think we shall need children's 
attendants 1 , wet-nurses, dry-nurses, tire-women, barbers, and 
again, relish-makers and cooks? And we shall want swine- 
herds too ; in our first city 2 we had nothing of the kind ; for 
we did not need them ; but in this they will be wanted ; and 
cattle, too, will be needed in great numbers, if they are to serve 
as food 3 . Is it not so? 

Of course. 
d And then shall we not be in need of physicians much more 
when living in this way than as before? 

Much more. 

And the territory which then sufficed to support its popu- 
lation will be no longer sufficient, but too small? Must we 
not say so? 

Yes, he said. 

Then we must cut off a slice of our neighbour's country, 
if we are to have enough to pasture and till ; and they will 
have to do the same to us, if they, like us, let themselves go in 
the unlimited 4 acquisition of wealth, overleaping the bounds 
of the necessary. 
e It is quite inevitable, Socrates, he said. 

Then we shall go to war, Glaucon, or how else? 

Just so, he said. 

1 Fathers will not look after their sons themselves ; mothers will not 
suckle their own children. Jowett and Campbell in loc. Plato's allusion 
here again suggests Rousseau. 

2 Swine were not kept in "the city of pigs." They are only kept for 
food. 

:i And not merely for draft as above. 

4 "Unlimited" or "unbounded.'* Wealth, for Plato, is a collection of 
instruments or resources, the "end" of which is to promote good life. If 
wealth or riches is treated as worth having for its own sake, as is apt to be 
the case when trade has become a distinct factor in the community, it seems 
to the Greek thinker to be a means which has lost connection with its end, 
and therefore he calls the acquisition of it "unlimited," i.e. there is no 
reason for stopping at any particular point, because there is no point at 
which anything, which he calls an end, is attained. 



Book II 43 

And, I continued, let us not yet say a word on the question 
whether war does good or harm, but only this much, that we 
have discovered the origin of war, in those conditions from 
which chiefly mischiefs arise to cities, when they arise at all, 
both in private and in public relations. 

Quite true. 

Further then, my friend, the city must be augmented by no 374 A 
small amount, but by a whole army 1 , which will march out and 
do battle with invaders in defence of its entire possessions and 
of all those whom we were just now describing. 

Why, he said; are they not sufficient by themselves? 

No, I answered, not if you and all of us were right in 
our assumption, when we were modelling our city. For we 
assumed, if you remember, that it was impossible for one man 
to practise several arts well. 

You say true, he replied. 

What then? said I; does not the strife of war seem to you b 
to be of the nature of an art 2 ? 

1 The whole educational and ethical scheme of the Republic centres in 
this army and the qualities of its members. We cannot tell whether Plato 
was aware of any paradox in thus seeming to elicit the highest spiritual 
good from the need of physical self-defence. In any case, it gives him 
occasion for a remarkable portrayal of the continuity of human nature from 
almost animal pugnacity and fidelity to refinement, loyalty, the citizen spirit, 
and ultimately the great soul of an ideal statesman. 

2 A reflection suggested by the growth of a mercenary and professional 
soldiery in the 4th century B.C. The citizen forces of the free States of 
Greece were more like a militia than a regular army, except where, as at 
Sparta, the whole state was organised for military purposes. Plato's idea 
is that you must have a trained professional soldiery, but it must not be 
alien, but the best blood of the citizens, and educated for peace and freedom 
no less than for war, which the Spartans were not. The argumentative 
passage which follows is the expression of a very serious feeling. Plato was 
twenty-five when Athens was occupied by her enemies, and her famous 
" long walls " were pulled down to the sound of music ; and he seems to 
have been impressed with the idea that a state's first duty was to be 
strong — inherently strong in the fibre of her people, not merely rich and 
"powerful." 



44 The Republic of Plato. 

Very much so. 

Then are we to treat shoe-making as more important than 



war 



Certainly not. 

But did we not bar the shoemaker from taking in hand 
to be at the same time either a farmer or a weaver or a builder, 
in order that our shoemaker's work might be properly brought 
to pass ; and of all the others in the same way did we not 
assign to each one a single thing, to which his nature led him ; 

c and for which having leisure from all else, working upon it his 
whole life long, letting no occasion slip, he was likely to 
perform it well 1 ? Or is it not of the highest import that 
matters of war should be well performed ? Or again, is it so 
easy a thing, that a man can carry on the tillage of the ground 
and be a skilled soldier besides, or go on with his shoe-making 
or working at any other craft whatever ? and yet no one could 
possibly become a competent draught-player, or chessplayer, 
if he did not practise that one thing from his boyhood up, 
but treated it as a matter by the way? And is it so, that if a 

d man takes up a shield or any other of the arms or instruments 
of war, he will become within the day an accomplished 
champion of fence in heavy armour, or of any other that war 
may demand; but of all other instruments there is none which 
by just being taken up will make any man a workman or 
a player, or will be of use to one who neither possesses the 
science of it, nor has been submitted to a sufficient training ? 

Instruments would be precious indeed, he answered, if they 
could do all that. 

Well then, I continued, the greater the guardian's 2 work, 

1 Or " beautifully." 

2 Thus, without special remark, is introduced the appellation with 
which the great ideas of the Republic are inseparably associated. It has 
been partly anticipated, in its more spiritual sense, by the remark of 367 E 
that a man duly trained is his own guardian against wrong-doing, and so 
far has no need of external guardianship. The choice of such a title is in 



Book II. 45 

the more complete liberation from all else will it demand, and e 
moreover the profounder craftsmanship and application. 

Indeed I think so. 

Then does it not also need a nature suitable to the nature 1 
of the calling ? 

Of course. 

Then it will be our business, apparently, if we are able, to 
select what natures and of what kind are suitable for the 
guardianship of a state. 

No doubt it will. 

By Zeus, then, I said, it is no trifling business that we have 
taken upon us ; still, we must stand to our work, as far as our 
strength will stretch. 

So we must, he said. 375 A 

Now do you think, I went on, that the nature of a well- 
bred dog 2 is different for the purpose of keeping guard from 
that of a noble young man ? 

What sort of thing do you mean ? 

Each of the two, for example, ought to be sharp to notice, 
and light-footed to pursue when he notices, and strong, more- 
over, in case he should have to fight when he has caught 
something. 

It is so, he said ; all this is necessary. 

itself a step beyond the idea of an army, in the ordinary sense, which seemed 
to be contemplated in 374 a. It prepares us for the discovery that the chief 
war in which the guardians are engaged (though their duty of fighting is a 
reality) is a Holy War, as in Bunyan's allegory, and that the city is the city 
of Mansoul. 

1 Lit. to the calling itself— to what it is as distinct from others. 

2 This famous comparison is a leading instance of Plato's humour in its 
combination with a perfectly direct and serious meaning. He begins the 
psychology of the guardian with the psychology of the watch-dog, i.e. he 
takes up the mental dispositions required in their simplest form, and 
traces their development up to the higher ranges of the human mind. 
The procedure is essentially modern, such as we have in comparative 
psychology. 



46 The Republic of Plato. 

And he must be brave \ if he is to fight well. 

Of course. 

Now can any creature be brave which is not spirited — either 
b a horse, or dog, or any other animal? or have you not observed 
what an irresistible and unconquerable thing is spirit 2 , making 
every soul that has it fearless and unyielding in face of every- 
thing ? 

I have noted it. 

So in bodily qualities it is plain what the guardian should be. 

Yes. 

And thus much too, as to his soul, that it should be spirited. 

That too is clear. 

But then, Glaucon, I said, how are they to escape being 
savage to one another and the rest of the citizens, if they are 
like this in their natures ? 
c By Zeus, he answered, not easily. 

They ought, however, to be gentle to their own people, and 
dangerous to the enemy, else they will not wait for others to 
annihilate them, but themselves will do it first. 

Quite true. 

What shall we do, then ? I said. Where are we to discover 
a disposition at once gentle and great-hearted 3 ? for I presume 
that a gentle nature is the opposite of a spirited one. 

1 The Greek word usually rendered brave etymologically=" manly," so 
that when applied as here to a dog, it at once makes a link between human 
and animal qualities. 

- Cf. Sophocles' Eledra. "For just as a noble horse, though he be 
old, when in peril does not lose spirit but pricks up his ear." In English 
usage, the adjective "spirited" corresponds to Plato's meaning better than 
the substantive " spirit." Whatever word we adopt must be carefully 
interpreted with reference to the context in Plato, and not merely by its 
current English associations. The fact which Plato starts from is the 
"pluck" of the thorough-bred that makes him "go till he drops" and 
fight till he dies. 

3 A different word, pointing to a further step in bringing out the meaning 
of " spirit." Mr Greatheart in the Pilgrim 's Progress is in many ways a fair 



Book IL 47 

It appears so. 

But yet, if one be destitute of either of these, whichever it 
be, there is no hope that he will prove a good guardian ; and 
what we want looks like an impossibility; and so the con- 
clusion is that for a good guardian to come into being is d 
impossible. 

Something near it, he said. 

Then I was perplexed, and thought over what had gone 
before, till I exclaimed, My dear friend, we deserve to be 
puzzled, for we have abandoned the comparison which we set 
before us. 

How do you mean ? 

We did not notice that in fact there are natures, such as 
we thought there were not, possessing these opposite qualities. 

Where are they? 

One may see it in other animals too, but most of all in e 
that which we were comparing to the guardian. You know 
that well-bred 1 dogs naturally have this disposition, to be as 
gentle as possible to those whom they are accustomed to and 
whom they know, but the opposite to strangers. 

I know it. 

What we want, then, is possible, and our quest for a guardian 
like this is not contrary to nature. 

Apparently not. 

Then do you not think that anyone who is to be of the 
guardian type stands in need of this further quality, in addition 
to being spirited to be also a lover of wisdom 2 in his nature? 376 a 

modern parallel for Plato's guardians, the bodily warfare being for him as 
for them at once actual and symbolic. 

1 Lit. "noble," indicating a pleasant sympathy with the dog's fine 
qualities, and anticipating the deepening of the argument. Glaucon is a 
sportsman and breeder (see 459 a), and the argument about fine dogs and 
horses is appropriate to him. 

2 Lit. "philosopher," which etymologically = lover of wisdom. Another 
of the subtle steps in the transition from the animal to the higher human 
mind, and an anticipation of the later argument. The " gentleness " of the 



48 The Republic of Plato. 

How? he said. I do not see. 

This again, I answered, you will observe in dogs ; a trait 
which we may well admire in the animal. 

Of what kind? 

If he sees anyone he does not know, he is angry, though 
the stranger has never hurt him ; but if he sees anyone he 
knows, he welcomes him, even though he has never received 
a kindness from him. Or have you never been struck by this? 

I never particularly attended to it before ; but it is plain 
that the dog does act in this way. 

Well, but this attribute of his nature is quite a pretty 
phenomenon and genuinely philosophic 1 . 
B In what way ? 

In as far as, I said, he discriminates the sight which he 
likes and that which he hates on no other ground than that he 
recognises the one and does not know the other. And yet 
how can he be other than fond of knowledge, if he distinguishes 
what he is at home with from what is alien to him by his appre- 
hension and his ignorance ? 

It is impossible that he should not be so. 

Well, but, I went on, fondness for knowledge and the love 
of wisdom 2 are the same thing ? 

The same, he said. 

Then we may boldly take it for truth of a human being too, 
that if he is to be of gentle bearing to his kinsfolk and acquaint- 
C ance 3 , he must be by nature philosophic and fond of know- 
ledge 4 . 

noble or well-bred dog is traced up into the general quality which makes 
creatures kind and social — the love of what we live with, of what is familiar, 
of our belongings, of what we can recognise and understand, or, in the 
widest sense, feel at home with. 

1 See note on previous page. 

2 Lit. " the philosophic." See below, note 4. 

8 Lit. "his belongings and those whom he knows," keeping up the 
connection with the previous argument. 

4 The quality mentioned in 376 A is here defined by a term which 



Book II. 49 

We may take it so, he replied. 

Then of one who is to be a perfect 1 guardian of a city we 
shall demand that he be by nature philosophic and spirited and 
swift and strong 2 . 

Absolutely so. 

Him then we will take as our starting point. But in what 
way are these to be nurtured and educated ? and will it be any d 
gain to us to examine the question with a view to discerning 
what is the object of our whole enquiry, in what way justice 
and injustice come into being in a state? that we may not 
omit a relevant discussion, or complete an excessive one. 

So Glaucon's brother broke in : Most certainly I anticipate 
that this enquiry is of value for our purpose. 

By Zeus, I said, my dear Adeimantus, then we must not let 
it drop, even if it turn out to be rather long. 

Of course not. 

Come, then, let us make a fable of it, story-telling at our e 
leisure 3 , and so in fancy educate our men. 

Yes, we must do so. 



Argument. 376 e — 383 c. The beginnings of education. 
What sort of ideas about divine beings should be conveyed to the 
young through tales and poetry. 

Then what is the education to be? Or is it difficult to 
find a better than that which the ages have discovered? It 



indicates its fuller scope — the impulse to unity in one form is gentleness, 
love, or public spirit, e.g. in a family or a state ; in another is the passion 
to apprehend, understand, to see the world as a harmony, which is what 
Plato means by philosophy or the love of culture. 

1 Lit. "beautiful and good," the Greek idiom to express a perfect 
gentleman, or knight sans penr et sans reproche. 

- See above 375 A. 

3 i.e. away from the everyday world. 

B, 4 



50 The Republic of Plato. 

is, I imagine, Gymnastic 1 for the body, and Music 2 for the 
mind. 

So it is. 

Now shall we not begin to educate them by music before 
gymnastic ? 

Certainly. 

And when you say so, you include stories in music, do you 
not? And there are two kinds of stories, the one true and the 
other false ? 
377 a Yes. 

And in education we have to use both, but the false ones 
first? 

I do not see your meaning 3 . 
^ Do you not see, I said, that we begin by telling fables to 
children ; and they, to speak of them as a whole, are fictions, 
though there are in them some elements of truth. And we tell 
children stories before we teach them gymnastics. 

It is so. 

This is what I meant by saying that we must set to work 
with music before gymnastics. 

You are right, he said. 

Now you know that in every enterprise the beginning is 

1 " Gymnastic for the body." Plato starts from the fact as currently 
accepted, and leads up to a deeper view, see 411 e; for what the bodily 
training in the widest sense includes, see 412 b. Cf. also 467 c— e. 

2 Music : the peculiar meaning of the word in Plato must be gathered 
from Plato. It had of course for the Greeks no such separate application 
to the mere art of sound as it has for us, but would usually imply something 
of the nature of poetry, with or without singing or instrumental music. For 
Plato, as an educational instrument, it is almost equivalent to our "art," 
including fiction and poetry, music, painting and plastic art. 

3 Often an indication in Plato that the thought will be new to the 
average mind. Of course, even if Nature is taken as the story-book 
(cf. Longfellow's Birthday of Agassiz\, it is impossible to convey what is 
truth for a mature mind to an immature one. Plato is about to point out 
what can and must be done. 



Book II. 51 

the main thing, especially in dealing with a young and tender b 
nature. For at that time it is most plastic, and the stamp 
sinks in deepest which it is desired to impress upon anyone. 

Just so. 

Shall we then quite lightly give licence for our children to 
hear any chance fables imagined by any chance people, and to 
receive in their souls impressions opposed to those which, when 
they have come to maturity, we shall think that they ought to 
possess? 1 

We must not permit it in the smallest degree. 

To begin with, as it seems, we must control the composers 
of fables, and select any good 2 ones which they compose, and c 
reject what are not good. And we will persuade the nurses 
and mothers to tell the children those fables which we have 
selected, seeing that they mould their souls with the tales they 
tell, far more really than their bodies with their hands 3 ; and 
we must throw aside the greater part of what they tell to-day. 

Which ? he asked. 

In the greater fables, I answered, we shall see how to judge 
the lesser. For both greater and lesser must be of the same 
stamp and have the same bearing. Do you not think so? 

Certainly, he said ; but I do not see even which are the d 
greater ones which you speak of. 

1 They shall at least have as little to unlearn as may be. Cf. 402 A 
on the relation of mature insight to the earlier right training in particular 
emotions and experiences. 

2 Lit. beautiful, but probably in a very general sense which is best 
rendered by our word good. 

3 Campbell quotes from Plutarch, On the Education of Boys, " For just 
as it is necessary to mould the limbs of children's bodies from birth onwards, 
that they may grow straight and undistorted, in the same way it is necessary 
to discipline their character from the beginning." But one fears that Plutarch 
may be following this passage, in which case he is no independent witness 
for the notion of " moulding the children's limbs." I am told that among 
the poor to-day, the women try to modify the shape of the children's heads 
by pressing them with their hands. 



52 The Republic of Plato. 

Those which Hesiod and Homer used to tell us, and the 
other poets too. For they, I imagine, put together false fables 
which they told and are still telling to mankind. 

Which are they, said he, and what fault do you find with 
them ? 

The primary and most serious of all faults, especially when 
the lie 1 is an ugly lie. 
E What is this fault ? 

When anyone imagines badly 2 in his story about gods or 
heroes 3 , what they are like, just as a painter whose picture has 
no resemblance to what he wished it to resemble. 

Why indeed, he said, things like that ought to be censured. 
But what do we mean, and which are they? 4 

First, I said, the greatest lie about the greatest things, an 
ugly lie to tell, that Uranus did 5 , what Hesiod says he did, and 
what vengeance Kronos took upon him, and the doings of 
378 a Kronos 5 , too, and his treatment by his sons; even if it had all 
been true, I should not have supposed it ought to be told as 
a matter of course to the young and immature ; but if there 

1 The primary defect is the falsehood, and it is worse when it is an ugly 
falsehood. As the whole passage is about fiction, these two degrees of 
faultiness tend to come together, i.e. the fiction is both false and ugly when 
its main ideas are unsuitable to its subject. 

2 Or, makes a bad likeness. The Greek fuses the ideas of "image" and 
"likeness" in a way English cannot render. 

'■> "Heroes" were men one of whose parents was a god or goddess, 
which was thought to have been possible only in the earlier generations of 
the human race. Some heroes were supposed to have become gods after 
their death, but all partook of divinity through their parentage. 

4 The difficulty with which the interlocutor takes up the criticism is 
probably meant to illustrate the difficulty of seeing anything wrong in 
stories to which we are accustomed. Parts of the Old Testament might be 
a case in point. 

•' Indecent stories of a type common in savage mythology. We are 
inclined to say, "But no one in Plato's day would take these things seriously 
as a part of religion." Plato however thinks that the child's mind would 
be stained by them. 



Book II. 53 

was some need to tell it, it should be a religious secret, for as 
few as possible to hear, having to sacrifice not a pig 1 , but some 
large and extravagant offering, that the smallest possible number 
might have come to hear about it. 

Why yes, he said, these are unpleasant stories. 
Yes, indeed, Adeimantus, and they absolutely must not be 
told in' our state. We must not tell a young listener that b 
in committing the extreme of outrage he would be doing 
nothing extraordinary, nor again in using the uttermost means 
to punish his father's transgressions; but that he would be 
doing the same as the first and the greatest of the gods. 

No, by Zeus, he answered, I myself do not think them suit- 
able to be told. 

Nor, said I, in any case whatever, that gods make war 
upon gods, and plot against them, and fight with them-for 
neither is it true— at least if those who are to guard our city c 
ought to believe it most disgraceful to be lightly at enmity 
with one another; least of all should we tell them stories and 
paint them pictures of battles between gods and giants, and 
other hostilities, many and various, of gods and heroes with 
their kinsfolk and families. But if in any way we are likely to 
convince them, that never yet was any citizen at feud with his 
fellow 2 , and that to be so is a sin, this is rather what must be d 
told them from earliest childhood by old men and women, and 
as they grow older we must compel the poets who compose 
tales for them to keep pretty near to this. But bindings ot 

i The offering required at the Eleusinian rites, which were very widely 

eil One of the first simple lessons to young children; the duty of gentle- 
and friendliness to their circle. It might be said that we have the 



ness 



less ana nieuuiiiicss ^ " ii -" w«~~ — — a 

-heathen" gods and goddesses as a sort of corpus vile about whom any 
stories may be told without inciting to imitation. Whereas to the Greeks 
these personages were in a more intimate relation, bound up with the 
traditions of the national past, even when no longer very seriously taken 
either as divine or as ancestors. Still, all suggestions are suggestive. 



54 The Republic of Plato. 

Hera by her son, and hurlings into space of Hephaestus by 
his father because he was going to defend his mother when 
beaten, and battles between gods which Homer has composed 
we must not receive into the city 1 , whether the poet had an 
allegorical meaning 2 or had not. For the young are not 
e capable of judging what is an allegory and what is not, but 
whatever one of that age has received among his impressions 
is wont to become indelible and immutable. For which 
reason, perhaps, it should be treated of the first importance 
that the earliest tales they hear should be invented most 
beautifully in their bearing upon goodness. 

Yes, he said, it is reasonable. But if any one were to put 
to us this further question what these inventions are, and which 
are the right fables, which should we then accept ? 
379 a And I replied, Adeimantus, you and I at the present 
moment are not poets, but founders of a state. Now it is the 
founder's business to know the canons within which the poets 
ought to invent their fables, and which they are not to be 
permitted to transgress in their composition ; but they them- 
selves are not to compose stories. 

Quite right, he said ; but on this very point— the canons of 
theology 3 — what may they be? 

Somewhat of this kind surely; God must always be repre- 

1 Another early lesson inculcated here and just above— respect for 
parents. * 

2 An under- or secondary meaning. There are many motives for findine 
an allegory in poetry, when nothing of the kind was intended; and one of 
them is the desire to explain away traits that jar on the moral feeling of a 
later time. Before Plato's day the criticism of Homer and the ancient 
mythology had taken this shape on the one hand, while it took that of 
frank censure on the other. Both are superfluous if we understand what 
poetry is; and Plato's next sentence is irony aimed at the allegorical 
interpretation. & 

:: Or of stories or discourses about the gods, or, about Cod I believe 
this is the first time that the word theology, "Theologia," occurs in 
literature. 



Book II 55 

sented such as he is, whether the representation be in epic 
poetry or in tragedy. 

He must. b 

Now is not God in reality good, and to be so spoken of? 

Of course. 

But no good thing is harmful, is it ? 

I think not. 

Then can what is not harmful, do harm ? 

By no means. 

And can that which does no harm, do any evil ? 

No, again. 

And what does no evil, cannot be the cause of any evil? 

Of course not. 

Well, now ; is good advantageous ? 

Yes. 

Then it is the cause of welfare ? 

Yes. 

Then good is not the cause of everything, but it is the cause 
of all that is well, and not of what is ill. 

Exactly, he said. 

Then God too, seeing that he is good, will not be the cause c 
of all things, as the common opinion is, but he must be the 
cause to mankind of few things, and of many not the cause ; 
for we have far fewer 1 good things than evil. Now what is 
good we must impute to none but him; but for what is evil 
we must seek out some other causes, and not God. 

What you are saying appears to me to be perfectly true. 

We are not, then, I continued, to assent to Homer or 



1 This passage sounds as if it admitted an evil and thwarting principle 
in i he world independent of the Deity; and ideas of this kind were not 
entirely alien to ancient thinkers. But, whatever the difficulties, modern 
thought would in the main assent to Plato's chief intention in the argument, 
which is, as we see below, that evil as evil absolutely must not be ascribed 
to the Deity. 



56 The Republic of Plato. 

another poet when he insanely runs into this error about the 
d gods, and says that 

"two casks lie at the threshold of Zeus 
Full of lots, the one of good, the other of evil ones 1 ." 

— and he to whom Zeus mingles and gives of the two, " at one 
time meets with good, and at another with ill," but he to whom 
it is not so, and the one is given unmingled 

" Him an evil plague harries over the divine earth," 
e or again that "Zeus is dispenser for us of good and ill." 

And the violation of the oaths and the truce", which 
Pandarus violated, if any man allege to have been brought to 
pass by Athene's means and Zeus', we shall not approve ; nor 
the strife and altercation of the gods 3 by Themis and Zeus; 
nor must we permit the young to hear how Aeschylus says 
380 a that "God implants guilt 4 in mortals when he intends to bring 
utter woe upon their house." 

But if any one shall make a poem on the fate of Niobe — it 
is in such an one that these verses occur — or on that of the 
House of Pelops 5 or the Trojan war or any other subject of 



This and the following quotations down to "good and ill" are 
apparently cited from memory, from Iliad xxiv. 527 ff. 

2 "The violation of the oaths" is part of the title of Book iv. of 
Homer's Iliad, and is described in the opening lines of that book. Hera, 
Zeus, and Athene are all agreed in arranging it. 

3 Homer's Iliad xx. 

Zeus sends Themis to summon the gods to an assembly, and there 
suggests to them that they should go and fight for Greeks and Trojans 
respectively, at their pleasure. 

4 The idea of Aeschylus here referred to may be read in the sense of 
Heracleitus' saying that "Character is fate." Plato is striking at current 
opinion, and for the moment does not care whether a higher rendering is 
possible. He is concerned with the actual common feeling which influences 
the young. 

5 The royal house of Mycenae, to which Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, 
Menelaus, Orestes and Electra, some of the principal figures in Greek poetry, 
belong. 



Book II 



57 



tne kind, either we must not permit him to say that it is the 
doing of a god, or if it is the doing of a god, they must find 
out some such principle as we are now seeking, and they must b 
say that all which the god did was just and good, and the 
others were gainers by being punished. But that those who 
pay a penalty are miserable, and that he who brought it about 
was a god, we must not allow the poet to say; but if he should 
say that the mortals were in need of punishment, because the 
wicked are miserable, and in paying the penalty they were 
being done good to by the god, we may allow it; but as for 
affirming that God 1 , who is good, can prove the cause of evil 
to any one, we must fight to the death by every possible means 
that none shall say it in our state, if it is to be a well-ordered c 
one, and none shall hear it, neither young nor old, whether the 
story be in verse or in prose ; for it would be a sin to say it, if 
it were said, and inexpedient for us, and contradictory to 
itself 2 . 

I vote with you, he said, for this law, and I approve it. 

This, then, I said, will be one of the laws and canons 
respecting the gods, within which the story-tellers must narrate 
and the poets must compose, that God is not the cause of all 
things but only of good. 

It is quite satisfactory. 

And what of this for the second ? Do you think that God d 
is a wizard 3 , and as of malice prepense makes appearance first 
in one guise and then in another, sometimes changing in 
himself and transmuting his form into many forms, and at 

1 The language of this entire passage is on the whole that of polytheism, 
implying a plurality of gods with definite shapes. It is intentionally dealing 
with the mythical or imaginative expression of religious ideas. Neverthe- 
less its principles are really fatal to polytheism, and in places the nature of 
God as such is so strongly insisted on that the form in which M*e are accus- 
tomed to speak of the Deity seems to be the best rendering of Plato's 
meaning. 

2 Because " the good " cannot be the cause of evil as such. 

3 A ' quick-change artist ' seems really to be the idea. 



58 The Republic of Plato. 

other times deluding us and making us think of him to that 
effect 1 ; or that his being is single, and of all things least 
tending to depart out of his own form? 

I am not able to say on the spur of the moment. 

What do you think about this? Is it not necessary, if 
anything departs from its own form, that it be transmuted either 
itself by itself, or by something else ? 

It is necessary. 

Now that which is in the best condition is least altered or 
disturbed by anything else ? Take the body as affected by food 
and drink and work, or any plant by heat and wind and such 
influences ; is not the healthiest and the strongest that which 
is least altered ? 
3S1 a Certainly. 

And is it not the bravest and wisest soul which an external 
affection has least power to distract and alter ? 

Yes. 

Well, and surely all artificial things also, all utensils and 
buildings, follow the same rule ; those which are well-made and 
in good condition undergo the least alteration by time and 
other influences. 

It is so. 

Then everything which is in a good condition, whether a 
b work of nature or of art or both together, is capable of the least 
alteration from without. 

It appears so. 

But God and the state of God is in all ways the best. 

Doubtless. 

Then in this point of view" God is very far from having 
many forms. 

1 Ancient poetry and mythology are full of stories to this effect, often 
in connection with the loves of the gods, or with their taking part in 
the warfare of mortals, both of which ideas would appear improper to Plato. 

2 Contrasted with the idea of the next paragraph, that God might 
change himself. 



Book II. 59 

Very far, he replied. 

But will he transform and alter himself? 

Plainly it is so, if he changes at all. 

Whether then does he change himself into something better 
and more beautiful than before, or into something worse and 
more ugly ? 

Necessarily he must change for the worse, if he changes at 
all ; for surely we shall not affirm that God is lacking in beauty c 
or excellence. 

What you say, is perfectly right, I replied ; and this being 
so, do you believe, Adeimantus, that any one, either of 
gods or men, would willingly make himself in any way 
worse ? 

It is impossible. 

Then, I said, it is impossible for a god to wish to change 
himself, but as it seems, each of them 1 being the best and most 
beautiful that is possible remains for ever simply in his own 
form. 

This, I think, is a sheer necessity. 

Then my good Sir, let none of the poets tell us that 2 d 

"gods in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands, becoming of all 
forms, roam from city to city," 

nor let any one slander Proteus 3 and Thetis 4 , nor again 
in tragedies or any poems introduce Hera transformed as a 



1 Here Plato is clearly using the language of polytheism. 

2 Odyssey xvn. 485. Plato omits the following line "to oversee the 
lawlessness and the lawfulness of mankind/' It is an argument against 
ill-treating a wandering beggar, like the more familiar " entertaining angels 
unawares," Hebrews xiii. 2. 

3 The old man of the sea, whose transformations, when \ iolent hands 
were laid on him, are recorded in the Odyssey. 

4 Thetis: supposed to have taken various forms to escape from her 
nuptials with Peleus. 



60 The Republic of Plato. 

priestess, collecting alms "for the lifegiving sons' of the Argive 
river Inachus." And there are many such lies which we must 
e not let them tell ; nor again must the mothers be perverted by 
them to terrify the children, telling the fables badly; for ex- 
ample, that there are certain gods who go about by night taking 
the shape of all sorts of strangers ; that they may not at the 
same time slander the gods, and make their children cowards 2 . 

They must not. 

But, said I, is it that the gods are in themselves incapable 
of change, but make it seem to us that they appear in various 
forms, deluding us and playing the wizard ? 

Perhaps, he said. 
382 a What ? I answered ; would a god be willing to lie either in 
word, or in act by presenting a false appearance ? 

I do not know. 

Do you not know that the true lie, if it is possible to use 
such a phrase, is hateful to all, both gods and men ? 

What do you mean? he asked. 

This, I said, that to be false in their sovereign part about 
matters of sovereign concern is what none consent to with their 
good will, but above all things they dread that a lie should be 
seated there. 

Even now, he replied, I do not understand. 

b Because you think that I am saying something abstruse ; 

but I only say that to be false in one's soul about realities', 

and to be deluded and in ignorance about them, and in that 

place to have and to hold the lie, is what all would repudiate 



1 The children of Inachus are the other rivers of Argolis on whose waters 
the fruitfulness of the plain depended. 

2 To prevent children from being frightened with stories of ghosts 
and bogeys was, I suppose, found difficult in quite recent years in 
England. 

'■'• The soul is "the sovereign part''; "realities,'' a clumsy modern 
phrase compared to the "what are " of the original, are the "matter of 
sovereign concern." 



Book II. 6 1 

at any cost, and they loathe the thing superlatively in such a 
case. 

Very much so. 

But, to come back to the phrase I used just now, this is 
what may most correctly be called the true lie, namely, the 
ignorance seated in the soul of the deluded person ; for the lie 
which is spoken is a sort of copy and subsequently generated 
image of the affection seated in the soul, and not a pure and 
absolute falsity 1 . Is it not so? c 

Certainly. 

The real lie then is loathed not only by gods but by men. 

I think so. 

But for the lie in words 2 , when and to whom is it ex- 
pedient, so as not to merit hate ? Is it not in communication 
with the enemy, or with any of our so-called friends who owing 
to insanity or some form of unreason endeavour to do mischief, 
that it proves useful on such occasions as a medicine for the 
prevention of harm ? And do we not in the story-telling d 
which we were speaking of just now, by reason of our not 
knowing how the truth stands about matters long ago, assimi- 
late the falsehood as far as we can to the truth, and so make it 
useful ? 

Exactly so. 

Now in which of these ways can a lie be of use to God? 

1 This passage is paradoxical to us. In order to grasp it, we must 
appreciate what "ignorance" means to Plato. It means what we might 
call a vicious or distorted view of the world, a delusion as to where the best 
things, and the things that can be relied on in life and death, are to be 
found. Immorality, including "the spoken lie" so far as immoral, is for 
Plato either identical with or a consequence of this blindness or depravity 
of the soul, which is the true (real or fundamental) lie. Plato's expression 
recalls such a fact as that the greatest liar will resent being deceived ; i.e. 
the soul never willingly surrenders truth for itself, even if, for one cause or 
another, it denies it to others. 

2 The point is to show that the occasion which makes deception 
pardonable in man cannot exist for a god. 



62 The Republic of Plato. 

Would he use fiction to imitate fact from ignorance of matters 
long ago ? 

Why, he said, that would be ridiculous. 

There is no lying poet in God, is there ? 

I fancy not. 

But would he tell lies from fear of his enemies? 

Far from it. 
e Or because of the unreason or madness of his friends? 

No, he said, no one mad or void of reason is a friend 
of God. 

Then there is no ground for which God should be false? 

None. 

Then- the superhuman 1 and the divine is wholly free from 
falsehood. 

Absolutely so. 

Then we may safely say that God 2 is a simple and true 
being in deed and word, neither changing of himself nor 
deluding others, neither in words nor by sending of portents, 
neither when men wake nor when they dream. 

Thus it seems to me too, he assented, when I hear your 
argument. 
383 a Do you agree then, I said, that this is the second canon, 
within which men must both tell tales and compose poetry 
about the gods, that neither are they themselves wizards in 
metamorphosing themselves, nor do they mislead us by false- 
hood of word or deed ? 

I agree. 

Then, while approving much in Homer, yet this we shall 

1 A word including all spirits and superior beings, such as the "heroes" 
above mentioned, who were not considered in the full sense deities. It 
would be used in the widest sense for the supernatural including the divine. 
It is the same word which is used for the supernatural sign of which Socrates 
used to say that he was aware. 

- The use of the word "God'* here is probably generic, as we might 
say " the child as such." It is very close upon the use as a name. 



Book II. 63 

not approve, the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon 1 ; 
nor in Aeschylus 2 , when Thetis says that Apollo singing at b 
her bridal 

" dwelt on her happy motherhood 
And long years free from sickness. 

And having told that my lot was in all things blessed of God 
He sang a strain of triumph, comforting me. 
And I was deeming that Phoebus' divine mouth 
Was infallible, alive with prophetic art ; 
But he that himself sang the strain, himself was present at the 

feast, 
Himself spoke those words, himself it was that slew my son." 

When anyone tells such tales about the gods, we shall be c 
angry, and shall refuse him a chorus 3 , and shall not permit the 
teachers to use his work for the education of the young, if our 
guardians are to prove god-revering and god-like 4 , to the 
greatest degree possible for man. 

I entirely assent to these canons, he answered, and I should 
adopt them as laws. 

1 The sending of a dream by Zeus to deceive Agamemnon is described 
in the opening lines of Book 11. of the Iliad. Cf. the story in 2 Chronicles 
xviii. 20. 

2 The sentiment here noted in Aeschylus is just such as, more vehemently 
insisted on, constituted one of the greatest offences of Euripides against 
tradition. It is remarkable that Plato chooses the poets of least question- 
able reputation to assail. 

3 The chorus for a drama at Athens — the chief expense of its production 
— was provided at the cost of some wealthy citizen, for whom this was a 
necessary and public duty, undertaken in a certain rotation. Not to grant 
a chorus meant to forbid the representation of the play. 

4 Two sides of the same idea, for Plato. The soul becomes like that 
which it worships. See 395 c and especially 500c, "Do you think it 
possible not to imitate what we are familiar with and admire ? " 



6 4 



BOOK III. 



Argument. 386 a— 392 c. Passing from fables about gods 
to fables on the whole about persons rather nearer humanity, 
and dealing with young people of a more advanced age than in 
the last book, Plato points out hoiv Courage, Truthfulness and 
Temperance, in elementary forms, may be promoted or the reverse 
through the imagination. 

386 a So far as regards the gods, I continued, it would seem that 
something like the above should be heard and should not be 
heard from early childhood by citizens who are to honour the 
gods and their parents, and are to pay no small regard to 
friendship with one another \ 

And I imagine our opinion is just. 

What next? If they are to be brave, must not what they 
are told be of that nature, and what will make them have the 
b least possible fear of death ; or do you think that any one 
could ever be brave, while having this fear in him? 

By Zeus, he answered, certainly not. 

How then? Do you suppose that one who believes the 
world of Hades 2 to be real and to be awful will prefer death to 
defeat and slavery? 

1 A summary of the passage just completed. 

- The quotations below show that Plato has mainly in mind not the 
other world as a place of reward and punishment, but the more primitive 
idea of a feeble and dreary prolongation of life, similar to life on earth. 



Book III. 65 

By no means. 

Then, as it seems, we ought to attend to these fables too 
and supervise those who take in hand to tell them, and 
request them not, as they do, to pour absolute contumely on 
the world of Hades, but rather to speak well of it; as what 
they say is not true, and does no good 1 to men whose duty it c 
will be to be valiant. 

No doubt we must. 

Then we shall erase everything to that effect, beginning 
with the following verses : 

" Rather would I live above ground as the hireling of another, with a 
landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the 
dead that be departed 2 ," 

and [the ruler of Hades feared lest] 

"The mansions should be displayed to gods and men, grim and moulder- D 
ing, which even the gods abhor 3 ," 

and 

" Ah me ! Surely there is even in the mansions of Hades a ghost and a 
phantom, but no mind in it at all 4 ," 

and 

" That he alone should have understanding ; but the other souls sweep 
shadow-like around 5 ," 

1 "Not true and does no good" are for Plato two sides of the same idea. 
Truth is the nourishing of the soul upon realities ; what starves and dwarfs 
the soul cannot, so far, be truth. 

2 Odyssey xi. 489 ff. The words of Achilles to Ulysses in the world of 
departed spirits. 

3 Iliad XX. 64 ff. In the description of Poseidon striking the earth with 
his trident (an earthquake?). The mansions of the dead are here thought 
of as an extended grave. 

4 Iliad xxiii. 103. Achilles after Patroclus has appeared to him in a 
dream. The ghost or soul or wraith is thought of as "a faint material 
effluence" of the man, not as "spiritual being." See Leaf on the passage 
in Homer. 

6 Odyssey X. 495, of Teiresias the great prophet or soothsayer when in 
Hades. 

B. 5 



66 The Republic of Plato. 

and 

"The soul flitting from his limbs went down to Hades lamenting its 
fate, leaving manhood and vigour 1 ," 

387 a and 

"The soul went beneath the ground like smoke, with a twittering cry-," 

and 

" Even as bats flit twittering in the secret place of a wondrous cave, 
when one has fallen down out of the rock from the cluster, and they 
cling each to each up aloft, even so the souls twittered as they fared 
together 3 ." 

b All this, and everything like it, we shall entreat of Homer 
and the other poets not to be indignant with us if we cancel, 
not that they are not poetical, and pleasant to the common 
crowd to hear ; but because the more poetical 4 they are, the 
less they are fit hearing for children or for men whose duty it is 
to be free 6 , dreading slavery more than death. 

Certainly. 

Are not moreover all the terrible and alarming names 
connected with that world to be put aside, Cocytuses, and 



1 Iliad xvi. 856, of Patroclus when slain by Hector. 

2 Iliad xxiii. 100, of the soul of Patroclus, seen by Achilles in his 
dream. For the twittering or chirping cry, the unmusical and unintelligible 
utterance of a feeble frightened creature, such as young birds, or bats, see 
next quotation. 

3 Odyssey XXIV. 6 — 9, of the souls of Penelope's suitors whom Ulysses 
had slain. (Rendering modified from Butcher and Lang's translation.) 
Plato's objection to these passages does not touch the question of a future 
life either one way or the other. Ideas like these of a continued existence 
would affect his mind as some "spiritualistic revelations" affect ours, with a 
sense of futility and degradation. 

4 I.e. the more they lend attraction to the sentiments they express. To 
be poetical is not yet a vice per se, though in Book X. it may become so. 

5 F"ree, cf. 395 C Freedom, the absence of obstruction within and 
without, is the key-note of the Republic. 



Book III. 67 

Styxes \ and ghosts and vampires, and the rest of that c 
type, the names of which make all who hear them shudder 
in the extreme ? And this may be well for another purpose 2 ; 
but we are afraid for our guardians lest such tremours may 
make them too hot and yet too soft 3 . 

We do well to be afraid. 

Then we reject them all? 

We do. 

And our stories and poetry must be of the opposite type to 
these. 

Clearly. 

Then we shall remove also the wailings and lamentations of 
illustrious men ? D 

Necessarily, he answered, if we remove the others. 

Consider, said I, whether we shall be right to remove them 
or not. We affirm that a good man will not think death 
terrible to a good man, whose comrade also he is 4 . 

He will not. 

Then he will not lament for the other's sake as if some 
fearful thing had befallen him. 

No indeed. 

Well but we affirm this too, that such an one is pre-emi- 
nently sufficing 5 to himself in living well 6 , and is least of all E 
men dependent upon others. 

1 Cocytus, the river of wailing, and Styx, the river of hate, rivers of the 
underworld. The plural is contemptuous. 

2 Poetic effect; the " making our flesh creep." 

:i A metaphor from metal-working or from wax; the idea is, "badly 
tempered" — overheated and having lost tenacity. 

4 And so can be sure of his constancy of character. The comradeship 
is thus a reason for not grieving, instead of being one for grieving. 

5 A hint which anticipates Stoicism, and seems opposed to the principle 
on which society rests. See 369 B and note. Of course a man may be able 
to stand alone, just because he has the true social spirit so strongly. 
Christianity has the same apparent antithesis, say, between the love of God 
and the love of man. 

G This phrase is exceedingly pregnant in Plato, and indicates the root 

5— 2 



68 The Republic of Plato. 

True. 

Then it is not terrible to him to lose a son or brother or 
money or anything else of the kind. 

It is not. 

Then he is the last man to lament when some such disaster 
befalls him, but will bear it most patiently. 

Very much so. 

So we should be right in taking away the laments of 

a illustrious men, and assigning them to women, and those not 

the best, and to inferior men, that those whom we affirm we 

are rearing to the guardianship of our country may feel 

repugnance 1 to behaving like them. 

Quite right. 

Again, we shall entreat Homer and the rest of the poets not 
to represent Achilles the son of a goddess 

" Lying first on his side, then again on his back, and then face down- 
wards, and then rising to his feet and sailing along by the shore of the 
unfertile sea 2 ," 

B nor taking in both hands the yellow dust to pour it over his 
head, nor weeping and lamenting 3 on other occasions, when 

of his and of Aristotle's ethics. See 353 — 4 above. Life, or that by which 
we live (see below 445 a), for the Greek thinker is the soul. Thus, in the 
largest and at the same time the simplest sense, to live well is to have 
a soul which is at once efficient (good in the Greek sense) and happy, 
just as to see well is to have eyes which work effectively and with 
comfort. 

1 " Repugnance." The same word as in the great passage 401 E where 
the theory of this part of education is summed up. The boy or girl is first 
of all to be trained by habit and imitation to shrink from what is wrong, 
vulgar, or ugly, and to be attracted by what is right. When the basis of 
life is thus moulded, the reason of it all will come home easily, though at a 
later stage. 

2 Iliad xxiv. 10 ff., of Achilles in his agony of sorrow for Patroclus. 
The words " sailing along" are put in to make the passage ridiculous. 

3 Plato is insensibly passing from courage (386 a) to temperance (389 d). 
The affinity of these two qualities, in self-mastery or the power of resisting 
the onset of emotion, is a favourite conception with Plato. 



Book III. 69 

and as Homer represents him ; nor Priam, by descent near to 
the gods, supplicating and rolling in the dung-heap, 
"Calling loudly on each man by name 1 ." 

And far more earnestly still we shall entreat them at least not 
to represent divine persons as wailing and crying 

"Ah me unhappy; ah me, poor mother of the best 2 ," C 

or at the very least, if it must be so with the gods, not to dare 
to portray with so little likeness the greatest of the gods as to 
make him say 

"Alas, I behold with my eyes a man whom I love being chased round 
the city, and my heart laments 3 ," 

and 

"Ah me! that it is fate for Sarpedon, dearest to me of men, to be d 
subdued by Patroclus, Menoetius' son 4 ." 

For if, my dear Adeimantus, our young people were to 
listen seriously to all that, and not to despise it as an un- 
worthy invention, then a man would be slow to think that 
himself, a mere human being, was above it, and to chide him- 
self if it should but cross his mind to say or do anything of the 
sort 5 ; but, more likely, without shame and without endurance 
he would whine out many a plaint and lamentation over trivial 
misfortunes. 

1 Iliad xxii. 414, of Priam praying his people not to prevent him from 
going to beg Achilles for the body of Hector. 

2 Iliad xviii. 54. Thetis, the divine mother of Achilles, lamenting over 
his griefs and his short life. 

:i Iliad xxii. 168. Zeus, watching Hector pursued by Achilles. 

4 Iliad xvi. 433. 

5 The Greeks needed this advice more than we do. According to 
Plutarch, even a man like Solon, the great statesman, on hearing of his 
son's death, is naturally described as " beating himself on the head, and 
doing and saying the other things which belong to strong emotion.'" I 
have observed the women crying loudly and demonstratively at a funeral 
in Greece. Perhaps we are in some ways too stolid. Yet we know that 
restraint in the signs of emotion is the first step to self-control. 



yo TJie Republic of Plato. 

E What you say is very true. 

But this is wrong, as our argument indicated just now 1 , 
which we must obey, until someone convinces us by another 
and a better one. 

It is wrong. 

Again, they ought not to be fond of laughter 2 . For it is 
pretty much the case that when anyone gives way to violent 
laughter, it demands a violent reaction. 

I agree. 

Then we must not approve when men of importance are 
389 a represented as overcome by laughter, and still less when 
gods are. 

Much less. 

Then we must further reject such passages as this in 
Homer, 

"And unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods when they 
saw Hephaestus bustling through the banquet-hall 3 ," 

according to your rule. 

If you like to call it mine, he said ; we certainly must 
reject them. 
p. Again, we must set a high value upon truth 4 . For if we 

1 387 e above. 

2 This does not come home to us. Contrast Carlyle on Teufelsdrockh"s 
laugh. The dangers of our temperament are in many ways opposed to 
those which threatened the Greeks — a people of southern blood, liable to 
emotional storms, in spite of their extraordinary intellectual endowments. 
See last note but one. We may illustrate the meaning by the need of 
stopping fits of laughter in hysterical persons, or by the appearance of a 
want of self-control and self-respect which is produced by violent laughter 
in public places. 

3 Iliad 1. 599, of Hephaestus, the lame god of fire and of the smithy, 
acting as waiter at the gods' banquet, to restore their cheerfulness. 

4 We must understand that Plato treats the good qualities of a man from 
different points of view according to the stage of education, the level of 
mind, with which he is concerned. Here truthfulness is introduced between 
courage and self-control, as the duty of a pupil or subject to his teacher 



Book III. yi 

said right just now, and falsehood is in reality useless to gods, 
and to men useful only as a medicine, it is plain that such 
a thing must be committed to the physician, and laymen must 
not touch it. 

Quite plain. 

Then the rulers x of the state, if anyone, have the duty of 
telling lies whether in dealing with the enemy or with fellow 
citizens, for the good of the city; but the rest must not meddle 
with such a thing ; since for a private individual to lie to such c 
rulers as these we shall say to be the same offence 2 , and a greater 
too, with that of a patient who should tell his doctor, or an 
athlete who should tell his trainer, what was not true about 
the affections of his own body; or of a man who should tell 
falsehoods to the pilot about the ship and the sailors, as to how 
himself or his mates were faring in their work. 

Most true. 

Then if a ruler catches anyone else in the state telling d 
falsehoods, any of those who are craftsmen 3 , 

or ruler — one ex hyp, wiser than himself. But this of course is not 
Plato's ultimate view of the ground or nature of the love of truth. See 
above 382 c. 

1 No one but the government may tell lies. Partly Plato's fun, partly 
an anticipation of such real difficulties as are raised to-day about the ethics 
of diplomacy and public action in general. 

2 What is the offence from Plato's present point of view ? It seems to 
be disloyalty, with strong emphasis on the stupidity which is really implied 
in disloyalty. The act is self-contradictory ; you refuse information to the 
very people whose business it is, in your interest, to have it. As he says, 
it is like not telling the truth to your doctor. We all know how trying this 
secretiveness in persons under authority can be. Truthfulness to fellow- 
citizens and to other human beings seems not to count ; but we are here 
speaking of persons under authority whose main duty is to the rulers. The 
love of truth for its own sake, which comes in at a later stage (and see 3S2 c), 
is really a further case of the same principle — loyalty to the system in which 
you are a member. 

3 Etymol. "workers for the public"; in Athenian time = artizan. 
Homer's inclusion of " professional " men in this class is interesting. 
Odyssey XVII. 383. 



j 2 The Republic of Plato. 

" vSoothsayer or physician or carpenter," 

he will punish him as introducing a practice tending to upset 
the state, like a ship, and disastrous. 

Yes, he said, if our act is to follow our word. 

But further, will not temperance 1 be necessary to our young 
men 2 ? 

Of course. 

And are not the following the chief elements of temperance, 
where a number of persons are concerned, to be obedient to 
e the rulers, and themselves to rule 3 the pleasures of drink, and 
love, and food ? 

I agree. 

Then we shall affirm that things like this are well said, 
when in Homer, for example, Diomede cries 

"Friend, sit in silence, and obey my word 4 ," 

and the passage which goes with it, 



1 "Temperance"; whatever rendering we adopt we shall need some 
effort to seize Plato's meaning. The etymology of the Greek word suggests 
soundness or sanity of mind. " Self-control " conveys too much the idea 
of a struggle. " Temperance " has the fault of suggesting to us merely the 
opposite of one or two vulgar vices. The temperate man in Plato (fuller 
account, 442 c) is one the elements of whose whole nature work heartily 
together in the service of reason — of law, that is, or intelligent purpose. 
A Greek statue of the great time, a figure, say, from the frieze of the 
Parthenon, might give us the best perception of what a Greek meant by 
temperance. 

2 " Young men." We have here insensibly passed beyond the stage of 
childhood. 

3 Obedience to authority and command of self. The relation of these 
two sides of " temperance " will be further explained in Bk. IV. They are 
the main aspects which would strike anyone, dealing, as Plato says, 
with "a number" of persons in course of education, which is the present 
point of view. 

4 Iliad IV. 412. The following parts of lines come from passages 
[Iliad in. 8; iv. 431) different from one another and from this. Plato's 
memory has associated them. 



Book III. 73 

"The Greeks came on, breathing courage,... in silence, fearing their 
officers," 

and any other like them. 390 a 

They are well said. 
But what about such as 

" O heavy with wine, dog-faced, with the heart of a deer 1 ," 

and the following lines, are they well said? And so of all 
the impertinences of individuals to rulers which are recounted 
in stories or in poetry? 

They are not right. 

No, for I imagine they are not suitable for young men to 
hear, if temperance is our aim ; but it is no wonder if apart 
from this they produce pleasure. Or what do you think ? 

I agree. 

Once more ; to represent the wisest of men as saying that 
he thinks it the finest thing in the world when the tables are 
loaded 

" With bread and flesh, and a wine-bearer drawing the wine serves it b 
round and pours it into the cups 2 ," 

does this appear to you to be conducive to self-restraint in 
a young man ? or the words 

" To die and meet doom by hunger is the most pitiful thing 3 " ? 

or to represent Zeus, after he had been deliberating, when the 
rest of gods and men were asleep and he alone was awake, as 
readily forgetting it all because of the passion of love, and c 

1 Iliad 1. 225, addressed by Achilles to Agamemnon, the king of men. 
Violence of this kind is not rare in Greek poetry; and though it does not 
disprove what is commonly told us about the fine self-restraint of Greek 
art, yet it shows the boundaries of expression in it to be less rigid than 
is often supposed. We are not surprised that Plato found such lines 
shocking. 

2 Odyssey ix. 8. As Professor Campbell remarks, Plato leaves out the 
minstrel, whom Homer mentions first. 

3 Odyssey XII. 342. 



74 The Republic of Plato. 

as so smitten at the sight of Hera that he would not go away, 
but wanted to stay there and make love to her, and telling her 
that he is so possessed by love as he had never been, even at 
first when they used to meet 

"Without their parents' knowledge 1 ," 
or the binding of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus 8 for 
similar reasons? 

No by Zeus, he said, I do not think this appropriate. 
d But if there are passages of endurance in the face of ex- 
tremity, whether spoken or acted by illustrious men, these 
should be looked at 3 and listened to, such as the lines 

" Then he smote upon his breast and rebuked his own heart, saying, 
' Endure, my heart; yea, a harder thing thou didst once bear 4 .'" 

By all means, he said. 
e Certainly we must not permit our men to be venal or 
avaricious 5 . 
No. 
So it must not be sung to them how 

"Gifts convince gods, and convince reverend kings 6 ," 
nor must we approve of Phoenix 7 the attendant of Achilles as 

1 Iliad xiv. 296. These words occur in the story, but are not used 
by Zeus. 

2 Odyssey vm. 266. A story in a comic vein, which strikes the reader 
at once as unlike Homer. 

3 Strictly implying "seen on the stage." Later on, Plato rejects the 
drama from his commonwealth. 

4 Odyssey XX. 17. Plato thought the former line very significant, and 
recurs to it 441 B below. 

5 Still under the general head of Temperance. Avarice and sensuality 
are for Plato extremes which meet ; they both mean preponderance of 
commonplace desire over intelligent aim, and in fact often go together. 
See 442 a. 

6 Said to be a quotation from Hesiod. 

7 Iliad ix. 432 ft". In this as in several other allusions, explained 
above, Plato does great injustice to the intention of the Homeric poet. 
The ancients were, by our standards, extraordinarily uncritical in their use 



Book III. 75 

giving reasonable advice, when he counselled his master to 
defend the Greeks if he got gifts, but without gifts not to 
abandon his wrath. Nor shall we think it right, nor admit the 
fact, that Achilles 1 himself was so covetous as to take presents 
from Agamemnon ; and again, to give up a dead man for 391 a 
a ransom, but not without. 

No, he said, it is not right to approve such passages. 

And, I continued, from respect for Homer I hardly like to 
say that it amounts to a sin to speak thus of Achilles, or to 
believe it when others speak so ; and again that he said to 
Apollo, 

" You have hindered me, far-worker, most mischievous of the gods ; 
surely I would take vengeance on you, if I had the power 2 ," 

and that to the river, who was a god, he was rebellious, and b 
ready to fight him ; and moreover we must not believe that, 
speaking of his hair, which was sacred to the other river, 
Spercheius, he said, 

" Let me offer it to Patroclus the hero, to take with him 3 ," 

he being a dead man, and that he did so. And the dragging 
of Hector round the tomb of Patroclus, and the slaughter of 
the captives over the funeral pile 4 , all of this we shall deny to 

of authors ; and Plato, who is quite as hostile to the popular misuse of 
poetry as an ethical guide (see 600 e) as he is to the poetry itself, does not 
much mind how he caricatures the vulgar method of arguing from texts. 
See, e.g., the passage on Homer's medical views, 405 e. It is true that he 
also thinks there might be a kind of poetry of a loftier form, and less easily 
misapplied — say, like Wordsworth or Milton. 

1 Iliad xix. 278; cf. 147 — 8, and see previous note. 

2 Iliad xxil. 15, 20. 

3 Iliad XXiii. 151. 

4 Many sentiments and actions included in the Iliad and Odyssey 
appear to belong to different ethical worlds, and it is hard to suppose 
that they ever co-existed. Plato represents on the whole the complete 
formation of a European or civilised sentiment — a marked stage in a 
process the beginning of which can be traced within the Homeric poems 
themselves. 



y6 The Republic of Plato. 

be true, and we shall forbid our men to believe that Achilles, 
c the son of a goddess, and of Peleus most temperate of men 
and grandson of Zeus, and himself bred up by Cheiron, famous 
for wisdom, was filled with so great distraction as to possess 
within himself two contrary vices, meanness joined with avarice, 
and presumptuousness against God and man. 
You say right, he replied. 

And then, I pursued, there is more which we must not 

believe, nor permit to be told ; that Theseus, son of Poseidon, 

d and Peirithous, son of Zeus, set out to perform such horrible 

outrages 1 , or that any other hero, son of a god or goddess, 

would have endured to do such awful and impious acts as are 

now slanderously laid to them ; but we must compel our poets 

either not to affirm that the deeds were theirs, or not to affirm 

that they were sons of gods ; but never to affirm both at once 2 , 

or to set about convincing our youths that gods produce evil 

E offspring and that heroes are no better than men. For as we 

were saying above 3 , such stories are sinful and untrue; for we 

proved, I think, that bad things cannot spring from the gods. 

Unquestionably. 

And in truth they are harmful to the hearer ; for everyone 
will feel indulgence for his own badness, when he is convinced 
that such are and have been the doings even of the close 
kindred of the gods, of those near to Zeus, 

"Whose altar to ancestral Zeus is on the hill of Ida, in heaven 4 , and the 
blood of deities has not yet perished out of them." 

1 Peirithous aided Theseus in carrying off Helen, and Theseus joined 
Peirithous in his attempt to steal Proserpine away from Pluto. 

2 All this is in part humorous, indicating that Plato here feels himself 
in the region of myth and anthropomorphism — of the "false," 377 a above, 
i.e. fiction and fancy; so that as long as the right effect is got it does 
not much matter how you get it. It is, too, a parody of the popular 
method which will get moral instruction out of poetical texts at all hazards. 

3 380 c. 

4 The hill is supposed by the poet to reach up into heaven. The quota- 
tion is from the Niobe of Aeschylus, a lost play. 



Book III. 77 

For which reasons such fables must be stopped, lest they 
generate in our young men a great facility of viciousness. 392 a 

Surely, he said. 

And now, I said, what kind is left for us to treat of in 
determining what stories are to be told and what are not ? We 
have stated how gods are to be spoken of; and also about 
spirits and heroes and the world of Hades. 

Quite so. 

Then what remains is to treat of human beings. 

Obviously. 

My dear Sir, it is impossible to ordain that at the point 
where we are. 

Why? 

Because I suppose we shall say that, as we hold, both 
poets and story-tellers go very far wrong in speaking of human b 
beings, when they assert that there are many who are unjust 
yet happy, and many just yet miserable; and that injustice is 
advantageous if it is not found out ; and that justice is another's 
good and one's own loss 1 ; and all this we shall forbid men to 
say, and shall enjoin on them both to sing and to tell the 
contrary of it all. Do not you think so ? 

Nay, he said, I know it well. 

Then if you admit that I am right, I shall say that you have 
admitted what we have all along been discussing ? 

Your rejoinder is right. c 

Well, then, we will not finally agree that statements about 
human beings are to be such as I suggest until we have found 
out what justice is, and that it is by nature advantageous to the 
possessor, whether he is thought to be just or no. 

Most true, he answered. 



1 These were the themes of an argument in Bk. I., and were reasserted, 
in order to draw a refutation, by Glaucon and Adeimantus in Bk. II. 
beginning. That Justice is another's good and one's own loss is more 
particularly the doctrine ascribed to Thrasymachus. See 367 C. 



7$ The Republic of Plato. 

Argument. 392 c — 398 b. Discussion of the permissible 
form of narration or represe?itation, i.e. how far it is right to 
" imitate " for imitations sake, and hoiu far a reserve should 
be exercised as to what characters and sentiments we throw 
ourselves into by "imitating" them. 

And now, I went on, we may close our treatment of narra- 
tives ; and the next thing to study, as I imagine, is the form of 
narration ; and then we shall have completely considered both 
what is to be said, and how to say it. 

And Adeimantus broke in, I don't understand what you 
mean by this 1 . 
d Well, but you ought to, said I ; perhaps you will know it 
better if I put it this way. Is not all that is told by story- 
tellers or by poets a narrative of things past or present or 
future ? 

What else should it be ? 

Then do they not execute it either in simple narrative or in 
narrative by way of imitation 2 ? 

This, too, he said, I need to understand more distinctly. 

It seems, I rejoined, that I am a ludicrously obscure in- 

E structor. So, as incompetent speakers do, I will try to explain 

to you what I mean by isolating a particular case of the matter, 

1 Indicating that Plato was saying something which he held to be new 
and important. 

2 This is the first introduction of the word imitation in the Republic. 
Plato uses it to begin with in a simple sense which he explains below 
(393c), much like ours; then in the course of the argument it naturally 
expands to a wider meaning (e.g. 400 A and 401 a) analogous to that in 
which both he and Aristotle employ it to sum up the essence of the "fine" 
arts. Expression, representation, are fair equivalents for it in this sense, as 
when (400 a) the rhythms of verses are spoken of as "imitations" (expres- 
sions or representations) of ethical types of life. The fact that human 
beings are almost infinitely open to "suggestion" from one another and their 
surroundings has recently been much insisted on in Psychology and 
Sociology. See Prof. \V. James, Talks on Psychology and Life 's Ideals, p. 48. 



Book III. 79 

and not in general. Now tell me, do you know the beginning 
of the Iliad, in which the poet says that Chryses entreated 
Agamemnon to release his daughter ; and he was angry ; and 
Chryses, when he did not obtain his request, prayed to the god 393 A 
to bring harm upon the Achaeans ? 

I know it. 

You know, then, that down to the lines 

"And entreated all the Achaeans, but chiefly the two Atridae, orderers 
of the people 1 ," 

the poet himself is the speaker, and does not even attempt to 
turn our thoughts in any other direction, as if anyone else were 
speaking but himself; but in the lines after those he speaks as 
if he were Chryses himself, and endeavours so far as possible b 
to make us think that the speaker is not Homer, but the priest, 
who is an old man ; and he has composed in pretty much 
these proportions 2 the rest of his narrative about what took 
place at Ilium, and events in Ithaca and throughout the 
Odyssey. 

Exactly so. 

Now it is narrative 3 both when he is repeating the 
speeches made on each occasion, and in the parts between 
the speeches. 

Of course. 

But when he is recounting a speech as if he were someone c 
else, shall we not say that then he is assimilating his way of 
speaking as much as possible to the person whom he has 
named beforehand as about to speak ? 

Xo doubt we shall. 

Then to assimilate oneself to another, whether in voice or 
in figure, is to "imitate 4 " that person to whom one assimilates 
himself? 

1 Iliad I. 15, 1 6. 

- With the same relative amounts of pure narrative and of " imitation." 

3 Or perhaps "discourse," a very neutral word. 

4 This simple and primary meaning of "imitation" should be borne in 



80 The Republic of Plato. 

Yes. 

In such a case, it appears, both Homer and the rest of the 
poets conduct their narrative by way of imitation. 

Certainly. 

But if the poet were never to conceal his own person, the 
whole of his poetry and narrative would have come into 
d existence without any imitation. And that you may not say 
that again you do not understand I will point out how this 
might be done. If Homer, after saying that Chryses came 
bearing his daughter's ransom and as a suppliant to the 
Achaeans, but chiefly to the kings, had continued the story 
from that point, not as having turned into Chryses but still as 
Homer, you know that it would not have been imitation but 
simple narrative. It would have been something like this — I 
will give it without metre, for I am no poet — The priest, when 
e he had come, prayed that the gods would grant to the Greeks 
to take Troy and get safe home themselves, and to release his 
daughter, accepting the ransom and reverencing the god. And 
after he had said this the rest were for respecting him and assent- 
ing, but Agamemnon grew furious, ordering him to depart at once 
and not to come again, lest the sceptre and fillets of the god 
should fail to protect him ; and before his daughter was 
released she should grow old in Argos with Agamemnon ; and 
394 a he commanded him to depart and not to provoke him, that he 
might reach home in safety. And the old man, when he heard 
it, was afraid and departed in silence, but, having left the camp, 
made many prayers to Apollo, rehearsing the titles of the god 



mind all through Plato's discussion of its admissibility in the training of the 
guardians. It is to throw off your own characteristics and adopt those of 
someone or something else. As remarked above, imitation has for the 
Greek thinker also a wider meaning in which all " fine " or expressive art 
and therefore the whole of Homer — and indeed everything capable of 
expression, is imitative. In Book X., where Plato is assailing the weak 
side of fine art, he applies a meaning akin to the first in the sphere of the 
second, i.e. he treats art and poetry not as expression but as copy-making. 



Book III 8 1 

and reminding him and entreating a recompense if ever he 
gave him grateful offerings either in the building of temples or 
in sacrifice of victims ; in return for which he prayed that the 
Achaeans might pay for his tears through Apollo's arrows 1 . 
This, my friend, is an instance of plain narrative without 
imitation. 

I understand, he said. b 

Then you must understand, I continued, that the opposite 
case occurs, when we take away what the poet puts in between 
the speeches, and leave the dialogue. 

This again, he said, I understand ; tragedy is something of 
the kind. 

You apprehend me perfectly. And now, I think I can 
make clear to you, what before I could not, that part of poetry 
or story telling is altogether in the medium of imitation, being, c 
as you suggest, tragedy and comedy: part consists of narrative 
told by the poet himself; you will find the clearest case per- 
haps in dithyrambs 2 ; and part again uses both together, as in 
the composition of epics, and many other instances, if you 
follow me. 

Yes, he said, I see now what you meant to say 3 . 

And you must recollect what went before, that we said we 
had finished describing what was to be told, but had still to 
consider how it should be told 4 . 

Yes, I remember. d 

Now this was the very question on which I meant that we 
must come to an agreement, whether we are to permit our 
poets to compose their narratives in imitative shape, or partly 
in imitative shape and partly not, and then of what kind 6 each 
part should be, or whether they are not to imitate at all. 



Iliad I. n — 42, turned into oblique oration. 
A kind of lyric poem. 

39a D. 

392 c. 6 395cff. 



82 The Republic of Plato. 

I predict, he said, that you are considering whether we 
shall receive tragedy and comedy into the city or not. 

Perhaps, I said; and perhaps something even more than 
this l ; for I myself do not yet know, but wherever the argu- 
ment, like a wind, may carry us, there we must go 2 . 
e Why, that is well said. 

Then, Adeimantus, you have this to consider, whether our 
guardians are to be imitative 3 or not; or is this a further 
consequence upon what has been said before, that each one 
person can practise one vocation well, but not several ; and if 
he attempted it, would become "Jack of all trades and master 
of none"? 

Of course he would. 

And does not the same rule apply to imitation, that the 
same man cannot carry on several imitations successfully, as he 
can one by itself? 

Certainly he cannot. 

395 a Then it will be quite out of the question for him at the 

same time to practise any vocation worth speaking of, and to 

carry on several imitations and be an imitative person, seeing 

that the same persons are unable to carry on at once even the 



1 This sentence may indicate that the question is not primarily one of 
literary classification, but of dealing with an ethical and educational factor, 
not confined either to literature or to any department of literature, the 
factor of imagination or suggestion, the entering into other lives and 
minds. 

2 "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth ; so is 
every man that is born of the spirit (breath or wind)." Plato here touches 
the analogy on which the idea of "spirit" rests. The wind seems a type 
of freedom and activity; it is invisible, you cannot stop it, or control its 
direction, or know, except by going with it, where it will take you. This 
is part of the reason why mind is called spirit ; no doubt there is also a 
reference to the " breath" as the invisible means of life. 

3 This is the real question, of which the issue about literature is only a 
sub-case. 



Book III. 83 

two forms of imitation which are supposed to be akin, as in 
composing tragedy and comedy 1 . Or did you not call these 
two forms of imitation 2 ? 

I did ; and you are right in saying that the same person 
cannot compose both. 

Nor do the same men succeed as rhapsodes 3 and as actors. 

True. 

Why, we do not even have the same actors in comedy and 
tragedy; and all these 4 are cases of imitation, are they not? b 

Yes, of imitation. 

And further, Adeimantus, I believe that human nature is 
subdivided into smaller pieces as regards inability to imitate 
many things well, than to do those real things of which the 
imitations are resemblances 5 . 

Very true. 

Now if we are to maintain our earlier principle, that it is 
right for our guardians, freed from all other craftsmanship, to 
be consummate artificers of liberty 6 for their State, and to c 

1 In the "Supper Party" {Symposium), 223 d, Plato represents Socrates 
as maintaining the reverse of this, viz., that the same poet ought to compose 
tragedy and comedy. Very likely that was meant to be a paradox ; at any 
rate no Athenian poet of the great time did compose both tragedy and 
comedy. 

2 394 B,C. 

3 Public reciters, who recited poetry, especially portions of Homer, on 
occasions such as festivals or games when crowds were in search of enter- 
tainment. The " rhapsodes " (song-stringers) have been credited with a 
considerable influence in making the Homeric poems what they are. 
Undoubtedly the poems were long preserved without writing. 

4 I.e. actors and reciters are " imitators," no less than dramatic poets. 

5 "Imitation" is so absorbing, that it is less possible to combine 
different modes of it, say, different arts, than it is to combine different 
kinds of action in real life ; which of course we all must do to a great 
extent. 

6 A modern reader may find some difficulty in understanding where, in 
Plato's commonwealth, liberty is to be found. It is however a most striking 
fact that so convinced an antagonist of democracy as vulgarly understood 

6—2 



84 The Republic of Plato. 

practise nothing but what bears upon this end, then it will be 
right for them neither to do nor to imitate anything else ; but 
if they imitate, they should imitate from earliest childhood 
what belongs to such a part, brave, temperate, religious and 
free men, and all such like characters ; but what is unfree they 
should neither do nor be skilled to imitate, nor anything else 
that is ugly 1 , that they may not from the imitation be infected 
with the reality. Or have you not perceived that imitations, if 

d they continue far on from our young days, become habits and 
a nature both in body, in speech, and in intelligence? 
Very much so. 

Then, I went on, we shall not permit persons whom we say 
we are taking care of and intend to become good men, being 
men to imitate a woman 2 , whether young or old, either abusing 
her husband or contending and vaunting herself against the 
gods, thinking herself in high good fortune, or again concerned 
in disaster and griefs and lamentations ; and as for one in 

E sickness or in love or in travail, we shall be very far from 
allowing it 3 . 

should yet proclaim that he held liberty to be the end of the State. What 
he means by liberty is a condition in which all selves are at their best and 
all made the most of, and there is no baffling of action and will by jarring 
elements. This is the purpose of the commonwealth, whether we agree or 
not with the means adopted to secure it. Cf. 387 b, and 577 c and d. This 
passage gives quite simply, though emphatically, the basis and point of his 
view about the power of imitation in education. 

1 We may think of the recognised evil of letting boys run wild among 
servants ; see below on not imitating slaves. 

2 As they would have to do in acting or reading tragedy. The position 
of women was perhaps the weakest side of Athenian society ; the intensity 
of political life, in which they had no share, seems to have made them even 
less important than, e.g., the Homeric poems represent them. It must be 
borne in mind that if Plato saw their weaknesses in a strong light, he also 
advocated the remedy. See Bk. V. of the Republic. 

3 Cf. 396 D, a parallel prohibition about men. The felicity with which 
these censures strike the subject-matter of modern novels is at least amusing 
and suggestive. 



Book III S5 

Certainly, he said. 

Nor again, slaves, whether women or men, doing what 
belongs to slaves 1 . 

Nor that either. 

Nor again inferior men, cowards, and behaving in the con- 
trary way to what we said but now 2 , reviling and satirising one 
another 3 , and calling ugly names, whether drunk or sober, and 
otherwise transgressing as such persons do both by words and 396 a 
deeds against themselves and others alike. I imagine too that 
our guardians are not to be trained to assimilate themselves to 
madmen in word or deed. For they must learn to recognise 4 
both madmen and vicious men or women, but they must do 
nothing in such a character nor imitate them. 

Very true. 

Well then, I asked, are they to imitate men working at the 
forge or at other artisan's work, or rowing galleys or giving b 
time to the rowers, or anything else of the kind ? 

1 Moderns are apt to resent expressions like these, and to recall the facts 
that slaves were human beings, and that Christianity was the triumph of the 
"servile virtues." And this is a fair criticism of the hard and unsympathetic 
side of the Greek mind. But it would be foolish to deny that the "menial" 
has typical vices, though not confined to the "menial" class; and the 
Greeks, rightly, had an intense repugnance to them. With slaves, as with 
women, Plato would give every capacity its development (433 d), the only 
means by which the vices he felt so strongly could be cured. 

2 395 C 

3 Lit. "putting one another into comedies." Aristophanes' attacks on 
Socrates by name in the Clotids had much to do with Socrates' unpopularity, 
and in that way, probably, with his trial and condemnation. At the close 
of the 5th century R.C. a law was passed at Athens to forbid " putting 
people into comedies under their true names," to avoid the aggravation 
of civic discord by this means. The comedy of Aristophanes is abusive and 
audacious to a degree for which Swift would be a modem parallel, if his 
worst language had been used of living statesmen by name. All this of 
course accords with the fact that the drama is one great form of the imitation 
which Plato is deprecating. 

4 See 409 on the further solution of the problem involved. 



86 The Republic of Plato. 

Why, how can they, he replied, when they will not be 
allowed even to let their attention dwell on any of these 
things ' ? 

Well, and neighing horses and bellowing bulls and sounding 
torrents and the roaring sea and thunder and all that kind of 
thing 2 — shall they imitate this ? 

Why, he answered, we have forbidden them either to be 
mad or to copy madmen. 



1 Here we touch perhaps the hardest of all paradoxes in Plato for the 
modern educationist. He, with the Greeks in general, seems to see no 
ethical or educational value in industrial occupations ; on a level with which 
he puts rowing (!), the function at Athens of the slave, alien, or poorer citizen. 
Rousseau's enthusiastic recommendation of carpentering as an educational 
pursuit (Emile) seems directly opposed to Plato's views, as is also the modern 
advocacy of "manual occupations" which dates, perhaps, from Froebel. 
We may note some points to diminish the difficulty, (i) A Greek gentle- 
man's life was in some ways comparable to that of an English country 
gentleman. It was not a town or study-bred life, but simple, social and 
athletic, with much management of farming, horses, and probably simple 
industries (vine-culture, tree-planting, etc.). The need for a "return to 
nature " — for renewed contact with earth and industry — was less pressing 
than now. (ii) Plato and the Greeks loathed any occupation that dis- 
figured the man, physically or mentally. Of course this feeling is in the 
main quite just — and if art, war, politics and literature, the occupations 
open to a gentleman in Greece, disfigure the man, as they may, this was an 
evil the Greek was only just beginning to experience, though Plato indeed is 
in this work devising and providing against it. We should admit that all 
occupations must " mark " the man, and should try to make this mark a 
development and not a disfigurement, (iii) It is therefore perhaps not in 
actual industrial practice, but in carefully organised training with wider 
aims, that the best educational result is obtained from "manual" occupa- 
tions, when their discipline is gained without cramping mind or body. The 
great passage, 401 — 2, shows how well Plato knew what the principle of 
plastic industry could do for the mind, and elsewhere he often shows 
(602 D, cf. Philebus and Apology) his appreciation of workmanlike skill 
and accuracy, and of the workman's recognition that he has a task in life 
(406 D). 

- Refers to entertainments which were coming in with the new music of 
Plato's day. 



Book III. 8; 

Then, I said, if I understand what you tell me 1 , there is 
one kind of speaking and narration in which a man who is 
genuinely good and noble will recite when he has to do so 2 ; c 
and there is another, unlike it, in which one will recite who 
has been bred and nurtured in the opposite way 3 . 

What are they ? 

I think, I answered him, that a good man, when he comes 
in his narrative to a saying or doing of a good man, will be 
ready to recite it as if he were that person himself, and will not 
be ashamed at such an imitation; preferring no doubt, to 
imitate the good man when his conduct is steadfast and rational, d 
but to a less amount and in a less degree, when upset by 
attacks of sickness or of love or even by drink or some other 
misfortune; but when he comes to someone unworthy of him, 
he will not consent seriously to assimilate himself to an in- 
ferior, except for a moment when he is doing something good ; 
but he will be ashamed to, both because he has no training in 
imitating such persons, and also because it is repugnant to 
him to squeeze and stamp himself into the mould of his 
inferiors; as the whole thing seems despicable to his under- e 
standing, except for the sake of amusement 4 . 

Naturally, he said. 

Then he will employ the sort of narrative which we de- 

1 The important and decisive conclusion is ascribed with Plato's usual 
irony to the innocent interlocutor. 

2 Lads were often told to sing or recite before company at Athens, just 
as young people are expected to-day to sing if they can. The father cursed 
with an enlightened son, in Aristophanes, calls on him to sing as a matter 
of course, and is shocked at the music and poetry he chooses. 

3 This is plainly true. We have only to think of different people's 
choice of songs, or of books for reading aloud, and the ways in which they 
sing or read. 

4 This large exception should be noted. There can be little doubt that 
great harm is done to-day by making trivial and vulgar characters and 
situations, as e.g. in commonplace novels, the principal nutriment of the 
mind. It is quite a different thing, as Plato implies, to take up such reading 
occasionally " for fun." 



88 The Republic of Plato. 

scribed a little above ' in the case of Homer's epics ; and his 
way of speaking will partake of both — of imitation and of 
ordinary narration ; but the imitation will be little in propor- 
tion to the length of the recital ; or am I wrong ? 

That is just what must be the type of such a speaker. 

And so, I continued, the other, who is not like him — the 
397 a poorer creature he is, the readier will he be to imitate every- 
thing, and will think nothing beneath him, so that he will 
set to to imitate everything intentionally and before large 
audiences ; both what we mentioned just now, such as thunder 
and the noise of wind and hail and of axles and pulleys and 
trumpets and flutes and panpipes and all sorts of instruments 2 , 
b and moreover the noises of dogs and cattle and birds ; and the 
whole of his mode of speaking will be by way of imitation with 
his voice and gestures and contain but a small part of mere 
narration. 

This too is inevitable. 

These, then, I said, are the two kinds 3 of speaking which I 
referred to. 

They are. 

Then the one of these has but slight transitions, and 
if a suitable inflexion 4 and rhythm be adapted to his mode of 
speaking, the result is, with proper utterance, that he employs 



1 394 c 

2 Imitating musical instruments with the human voice. 

3 See 396 B and c Considering 397 b and 40 r B "we must not regulate 
only the poets," we may take these two types or kinds of speaking as 
ultimately a classification of poets. Some poets observe a proportion in 
dealing with life, and a reserve in touching its lower aspects ; others revel 
in the latter. Poetry was regarded in Greece much more as something 
spoken or sung than something written. So the poet and the occasional 
reciter are hardly kept apart in this passage ; though the following sentence 
seems to explain how the reciter should adapt himself to the poet. 

4 Understanding the word Harmonia, which in a context dealing with 
music means scale or key, to be here used of the inflexions or transitions 
of the voice in reading or reciting without music. 



Book III. 89 

just about a uniform mode of speech and simple inflexion — for 
the transitions are slight — and in a rhythm too of much the 
same character. 

It is absolutely so, he said. c 

And what of the other's type ? Does it not need just the 
contrary — all inflexions and all rhythms — if it is in turn to be 
suitably uttered, because it has the most varied forms of 
transition 1 ? 

That is precisely the case. 

Then do not all poets and narrators either hit upon the one 
of these types of utterance, or upon the other, or upon one 
which they compose by mingling the two? 

Necessarily so. 

What are we to do then ? I asked ; are we to receive all d 
these into the city 2 , or one of the two unmixed types, or the 
mixed type ? 

If my view conquers, he said, the unmixed imitator of the 
good. 

1 It does not really matter whether in interpreting this contrast we 
think mainly of character, language, metre or music. It is Plato's funda- 
mental principle that all these must go together. We might compare it with 
the contrast between Wordsworth and Byron or with that between Handel 
and Wagner. From one point of view Plato may be criticised as failing to 
distinguish the complex from the confused or disorderly — the former having 
in truth a higher unity than the simple, and only the latter a lower. We 
might suggest, perhaps, that our modern great men from Shakespeare to 
Wagner, might very roughly illustrate Plato's "mixed" type — i.e. a type in 
which great characters are greatly drawn, but all kinds find expression ; 
while the unmixed second type would correspond to a variety entertainment 
or at best to opera bouffe. 

2 We have insensibly enlarged the question from that of the training of 
the young to that of the ethical system of the State. The transition was 
practically made in 394 E and 395 B and c, where we saw that the true 
problem is, what the fundamental character of the guardians is to be — and 
the guardians are, as becomes clearer and clearer in the course of the book, 
just ourselves conceived as at our best — the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of manhood. So their life naturally becomes one with the standard 
of the State. 



90 The Republic of Plato. 

But in truth, Adeimantus, the mixed type too is pleasant ; 
and by far the most pleasant to children and their attendants 1 
and the bulk of the crowd is the opposite 2 type to that which 
you select. 

Yes, it is the pleasantest. 

But perhaps, I said, you would affirm that it is not in 
e harmony with our institutions, because with us there is no 
double nor multiple man, seeing that each does one thing. 

No, it is not in harmony. 

Therefore for this reason it is only in a State like ours that 
you will find a shoemaker a shoemaker, and not a helmsman in 
addition to his shoemaking 3 , and the farmer a farmer 4 and not 
a judge in addition to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and 
not a money-maker 5 in addition to his soldiering, and so with 

1 Nurserymaid's art, as we might say. When we wish to prove Plato 
to be narrow and perverse, we talk grandly of modern art — Shakespeare 
and Beethoven. But if we were to take downright views of the facts — say 
a census of the London theatres, concerts, and music-halls for any one night, 
noting the quality of the entertainments, we should find Plato's estimate of 
what people like to be pretty literally true. 

2 I.e. the unmixed imitation of variety, probably something like a 
pantomimic entertainment. 

3 The Athenian fleet employed large numbers of the poorer citizens as 
rowers, and no doubt as steersmen. It was their energy and skill that 
secured the power of Athens, by giving her a nucleus of reliable sailors such 
as no other Greek state possessed. As the fleet when fully manned would 
employ 60,000 men, and there were not more than 20,000 adult citizens all 
told, it is plain they could only be a nucleus. Plato was in violent reaction 
against much that seems to us really splendid in the vigorous life of the old 
democracy. The whole system seemed to him to have meant " meddling 
and muddling" and disaster. We should compare his feeling with that of 
Ruskin or Carlyle about nineteenth centuiy achievements. 

4 The poorer Athenian citizens acted as paid jurymen or judges in 
enormous courts of 500 or more with no presiding judge to control them. 
The system was supposed to be a democratic abuse, though it did not work 
altogether ill. 

5 In allusion to the mercenary soldiery which was a phenomenon of 
Plato's time. An immortal type of the soldier who is a man of business as 



Book III. 91 

all of them? Thus, as it seems, were there to be a man of 
such cunning that he was able to make himself into anything 398 a 
and imitate all objects, if he should come into our city desiring 
to make an exhibition of himself and his poems, we should 
prostrate ourselves before him as a sacred being and marvellous 
and delightful, but we should say to him that there is no such 
man in our city, nor is it lawful that one should come there ; 
and we should dismiss him to another State, having poured 
perfumes over his head and garlanded him with wool 1 ; but we 
ourselves should employ the severer and less delightful poet 2 , b 
for the sake of his profitableness ; who should imitate for us the 
mode of speaking of the good man, and tell us what he has to 
tell within those outlines, which we enacted at the beginning 3 , 
when we were taking in hand to educate our guardians. 

Certainly, he said, that is what we would do, if it were in 
our power. 

well — the mercenary in all ages — is to be found in Walter Scott's Captain 
Dugald Dalgetty in the Legend of Montrose. 

Here again a modern at once objects, "but is a man to have no versa- 
tility, and no citizen duties and activities outside his daily trade?" But 
this is to want to write like Shakespeare before you have learned the 
alphabet. Plato is fighting to establish the principle — the neglect of which 
he believed to be ruining his world — that each man is rooted in the common- 
wealth through some service which he, better than anyone else, can render 
to it ; and it implies to begin with, that, with a loyally and rationally- 
good will, expressed in one definite duty, he has in principle what his 
humanity requires. "When that law is admitted as a foundation, then 
whether a man may single-heartedly prove himself capable of a many- 
branched function, as in fact Plato's guardians do, is a problem of actual 
capacity. 

1 Fillets, or garlands of wool, which to us do not seem very tempting, 
were used on sacred occasions by the Greeks because in that hot climate 
flowers wither almost as soon as plucked. 

2 After all reservation this remains right for all time in its central 
meaning. Great art makes a great demand. It is the paradox of art as of 
life that to get the higher or even the intenser pleasure you must not take 
up with that which comes easiest to hand. 

3 E.g. the " outlines of theology," 379 A ff. 



92 The Republic of Plato. 

So now, my friend, I said, it seems likely that the part 
of music which includes stories and fables 1 is completely 
finished ; for we have laid down what is to be said, and how. 

I think so too, myself, he answered. 



Argument. 398 c — 401 a. Modes and Rhythms express 
character. 

c After this, then, there remains the subject of the character 
of song and of tune 2 ? 

1 Note that "fable," Latin fabula, Greek miilhos (from which 
"myth" is derived), is the technical word for the "story" or plot of a 
drama. So that the above discussion has included a reference to the 
drama, though the point considered has not been the difference between 
dramatic and other poetry, but the general influence of poetry on the 
tendency to indiscriminate impersonation. In the beginning of Book X. 
Homer and the dramatists seem to be treated as of one ethical type, and it 
is assumed that the present discussion has had the result of banishing 
them all. 

2 Greek music is a difficult subject about which important questions are 
still in controversy. We will set down some simple points which may help 
to make Plato's suggestions intelligible. 

(a) Music was thought of as an accompaniment to words and dancing. 
Its independent development, which was just beginning, seemed to Plato 
to be wrong. As a rule, a note went to a syllable, that is, a musical note 
to a subdivision of the metre. The composer could not stretch out the 
words as he liked. 

(b) Harmony, in the modern sense, was but little used. The Greek 
word Harmonia, below rendered " mode " in compliance with custom, may 
have meant a "scale," a certain sequence of intervals. If so, the modes 
differed from each other in the same sort of way as our major scales differ 
from our minor scales; this is the older view, and according to it there were 
seven modes, one for each note of the scale. We get them by playing on 
the white notes of the piano as follows : Hypo-Dorian or /Eolian, A to A ; 
Mixo-Lydian, B to B ; Lydian, C to C ; Phrygian, D to D; Dorian, 
E to E; Hypo-Lydian, F to F; Hypo-Phrygian or Ionian, G to G. 
According to another view the difference between the modes was a 
difference of pitch, a difference, in short, of "Key"; see The Modes 
of Ancient Greek Music, by D. B. Monro, or, for an interesting quotation 



Book III 93 

Clearly. 

Now everyone can see at once what we have to say that 
they must be like, if we are to harmonise with what we have 
already said. 

So Glaucon smiled and said, Probably then, Socrates, 
" everyone " does not include me ; at least I am not able at the 
moment to infer adequately what we ought to say. However, 
I have a suspicion. 

At any rate, I answered, presumably you are equal to 
affirming this, that a melody consists of three parts, words, D 
mode, and rhythm 1 . 

Yes, I can say that much. 

Now the part of it which is " the words," I suppose, in no 
way differs from words which are not being sung, in respect 
that its matter should be within the outlines which we laid 
down, and its form be what we prescribed 2 . 

from this work, Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 130. 
In any case the different modes were commonly recognised as being de- 
finitely suitable for different kinds of poetry and music. E.g. the "Dorian" 
was "manly," "stately," "forcible," "sombre," and so on. 

(c) The music was very simple, and the definiteness of the effect 
ascribed to it must have been due to its simplicity. Hymn tunes, march 
music, and dance music — the two latter intimately associated with the 
movements which accompany them — may give us some notion of the 
characteristics which Plato has in mind. 

(d) Whether or not we can understand in detail the sort of effect and 
expression which Plato ascribes to the " modes," we may appreciate his 
ardent conviction that it matters intensely to our life what kind of music, 
poetry and dancing we accustom ourselves to like, and that in all these 
utterances we are imitating, i.e. making our own, certain mental tendencies 
to which others have given shape. 

1 On rhythm see 399 e and notes. The word suggests movement, 
and dancing is to the Greek the typical case of it. Dancing again is 
connected with acting, through the peculiarly Greek art of imitative 
or pantomimic dancing, in which the performer " danced Medea," say, 
or "Ajax." 

2 The two elements, (a) the narrative itself, and (/3) the form of narra- 
tion. See 392 c. 



94 The Republic of Plato. 

True, he said. 

And further, the mode and rhythm ought to follow the 
words 1 . 

Of course. 

But we said that we did not want wailings and lamentations 
in our narratives. 

Certainly not. 
e Then which are the mournful modes ? Tell me, for you 
are musical. 

Mixo-Lydian, he said, and syntono-Lydian 2 , and some of 
that type. 

Well, then, these, I said, ought to be abolished ; for they 
are useless even to women who are to be good, not to speak of 
men. 

Quite so. 

Again, drunkenness is a most unbecoming thing to guardians, 
and so are softness 3 and indolence. 

No doubt. 

Which of the modes, then, are soft and convivial ? 

Ionian, he said, and Lydian, which are called the relaxed 
modes. 

Could you make any use of them for military men ? 
399 a Not at all, he replied ; probably the Dorian and Phrygian 
are what you will have left. 

I am not acquainted with the modes 4 , I said, but leave me 

1 The whole work of art, with its different aspects, must be penetrated 
with the ideas and emotions of the words which express its substance. Of 
course even Plato does not mean that the music adds nothing. But what it 
adds, must carry out further the idea which inspires the text. 

2 Not identical with any of those in the enumeration given above 
(p. 92), but probably akin to the other Lydian modes. The name of the 
" mode" has in Greek a peculiar adverbial ending. 

3 The oppesite of spiritedness in Plato's sense ; see 375 and notes ; 
effeminacy. 

4 Plato's way of indicating that the subject is too technical to be gone 
into in a general work, and that the principle concerned could be made clear 



Book III. 95 

that mode which will properly imitate the tones 1 and inflexions 
of a brave man in the act of war or in any inevitable 
duty, and failing, or going to meet wounds, or death, or having b 
fallen into any other disaster, and in all this confronting fortune 
with discipline and endurance ; and another mode for one in 
the acts of peace, acts not compulsory but voluntary, either 
persuading and entreating someone, whether a god in prayer or 
a man with instruction and admonition, or again, on the con- 
trary, giving attention to another's prayers or instruction or 
persuasion ; and in the sequel succeeding in his wish and not 
being presumptuous, but in all these matters behaving temper- c 
ately and reasonably, and accepting the issue 2 . These two 
modes, the compulsory and the free, which will best imitate the 
tones of men faring ill and of men faring well, of men temperate 
and of men brave, these you must leave me. 

Yes, he said, those which you ask to have left are no others 
than those I mentioned but now. 

Then we shall not want instruments of many strings or of 
all the modes in our songs and melodies. 

I am sure we shall not. 

So we shall not maintain artificers of three-cornered lyres 
and of lutes or of any instruments which have many strings and d 
can be played in many modes. 

Clearly not. 

But now shall you admit flute-makers or flute-players into 

without further detail. Cf. "we will refer it to Damon" in the discussion 
of rhythm, 400 C. 

1 Note the expression " imitate the tones of," viz. imitate sound by 
sound. We soon arrive at the idea of sound imitating (uttering or repre- 
senting) moral qualities (399 — 400). 

2 Plato elsewhere (Laws vn. 814 e) describes the two desirable forms 
of dancing, substantially as he here describes the two desirable modes of 
music — one of war and endurance, the other of peace and happiness. This 
shews how near the movement of the dance is to his mind when he speaks 
of music. Cf. "the dancers dancing in tune," i.e. the tunefulness goes 
through their whole bearing and gesture. 



g6 The Republic of Plato. 

your city ? Or is not the flute, if I may say so, the most many- 
strmged of all 1 , and the instruments of many modes themselves 
are imitations of the flute? 

Obviously. 

Then you have the lyre left, and the harp, for use in the 
town, and some kind of panpipe for herdsmen in the fields. 
e That, at any rate, is what the argument indicates. 

At least, my dear Sir, we are doing nothing extraordinary in 
preferring Apollo and his instrument before Marsyas and his. 

Indeed, I think not. 

And, by the dog 2 , I said, without noticing it we are purging 
again the State which but now we said was luxurious. 

The more temperate we, he said. 

Come, then, I resumed, and let us finish the purgation. 
Next after modes we must treat of rhythms 3 , deciding not to 

1 I.e. capable of producing the greatest variety of notes. The mode of 
expression is an intentional paradox. There was always a feeling among 
the Greeks, expressed by the story (see below) of Marsyas the Faun, who 
contended with Apollo (the flute against the lyre) that the flute represented 
a barbaric element in music, and the lyre was the instrument for civilised 
peoples. It seemed a confirmation of this view to the Athenians that flute- 
playing disfigured the face. Compare the remarks on Gabriel Oaks' appear- 
ance in Far from the Madding Crowd. 

2 Elsewhere in Plato "by the dog, the Egyptian god." A humorous 
variety of the current Greek oath. 

3 See note on 398 c. The idea of rhythm is derived from movement, 
and is usually understood of it. It requires (a) a succession of equal units, 
(b) a recurring stress or change to bind them together into larger systems. 
The ticking of a clock, if unvarying, has not the latter ; the song of birds, 
as a rule, has not the former, and neither of these is a really complete 
rhythm, though we seem to find a simple one in the clock's ticking or in 
soldiers' marching. In a wider but kindred sense, all perceptible form has 
some sort of rhythm, or binding of members into systems; e.g. the word 
can be used of architectural effects, such as the way in which the windows 
of a house are set in its wall-surface. The proportion of a man's limbs, too, 
may be called a "rhythm." All speaking has a stress or accent, both of 
the sentence and of the word, and metre or verse is merely an elaboration 
of this, taking a beat or short syllable as a unit, and combining them into 



Book III. 97 

aim at elaborate ones nor very varied movements 1 , but see 
what are the rhythms 2 of an orderly and courageous life : and, 
having seen these, to compel the foot and the tune to follow 400 a 
words of such a character, and not the words to follow the foot 
and tune 3 . But which these rhythms may be, it is for you to 
point out, as you did the modes. 

By Zeus, he answered, I cannot say. I have indeed seen 
enough of the subject to affirm that there are some three forms 4 
out of which the metres are built up, as in sounds there are 

feet by recurring stresses. In modern verse the stress is given by the loud- 
ness with which a syllable is pronounced compared to the others, but in 
Greek and Latin verse, as a rule, the stress was conveyed by quantity, viz. 
by the fact or convention that a normal stressed syllable took twice as long 
to pronounce as a normal unstressed one (as in Tityre, a dactyl, the syllable 
Ti is supposed to take as long to read as the two syllables tyre together). 
Of course there is " quantity" in modern verse ; some syllables take longer 
to pronounce than others, and this affects the movement of the verse. But 
we slur over the "quantity" as we please, and determine the rhythm mainly 
by accent, i.e. by relative loudness. Other recurrent changes mark off the 
verse, couplet, or stanza. 

1 Lit. "goings," i.e. the characteristic march or system of the metre in 
each case — the feature in which the versification of 

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring 
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing..." 
differs from that of 

"Arethusa arose from her couch of snows in the Acroceraunian 
mountains." 

2 Here the rhythms begin to symbolise moral qualities directly. 

3 Plato does not exactly say with Lewis Carroll, "Take care of the 
sense and the sounds will take care of themselves," but "begin by taking 
care of the sense, and then see that the sounds and ' tune ' are suitable 
to it." 

4 Three kinds of time, identified with our "four time," "three time," 
and "five time." In ancient metre (see note 3, p. 96) two short syllables 
were taken as = one long, and one short syllable as the normal unit of time. 
So four time gave the dactyl (-- s -), spondee (--) or anapaest (~~-), three 
time the iambus (~ -) or trochee (- w ), and five time the cretic or paeonic 



98 The Republic of Plato, 

four 1 , out of which all the modes arise, but which of these are 
imitations of which type of life, I cannot say. 

b Well, then, on these points we may take Damon 2 into our 
councils, to consider what are the metrical movements appro- 
priate to illiberality and insolence or madness and other 
viciousness, and what rhythms are to be left for their opposites. 
For I think I have heard him — but I did not grasp it clearly — 
speaking of a cretic 3 metre which was compound, and a dactyl 
and heroic foot, too, arranging them somehow so that the up 
and down were equal 4 , being resolved into long and short ; and 
I fancy he named an iambus, and a trochee 5 too, and marked 

C longs and shorts in them ; and in some of them I fancy that he 
censured and approved the movement of the foot 6 no less than 
the metres themselves ; or perhaps it was their combined effect : 
I am not able to say. But all this, as I said, we must refer to 
Damon ; for to make it distinct would need a considerable 
discussion ; do you not think so ? 
Indeed I do. 
But this at least you are able to state distinctly, that right 



1 Perhaps the four notes of the tetrachord ; but the meaning is dis- 
puted. 

2 A famous musician, said to have been the teacher of Pericles : he 
was supposed to communicate philosophical ideas in his musical teaching. 
Very probably this was a popular misunderstanding, adopted by Plato in 
jest. 

3 Cretic or paeonic -~-five;time, see above, p. 97, note 4. "Compound," 
because = a trochee --', plus a long syllable. 

4 "Equal kind," or in our terms "four time"; the dactyl --- and 
anapaest -"-- having the "up" or unstressed part (~~) named arsis from 
the foot being raised, equal in duration to the "down" or stressed part 
named thesis from the foot being down (-). Modern writers reverse the 
use of arsis and thesis, making them mean the "raising" and "lowering" 
of the voice. 

5 ~- and -**; three time. 

6 Possibly a phrase taken from dancing. Here it seems to mean the 
actual tempo of performance — the time occupied by the unit beat. 



Book III. 99 

bearing and wrong bearing attend upon right rhythm and wrong 
rhythm ? 

Of course. 

But right and wrong rhythm attend upon and retain the d 
likeness of the right form of utterance and its opposite, and 
right and wrong mode, in the same way ; if, as we just now laid 
it down, the rhythm and the mode follow after the words, and 
not the words after them. 

Surely, all this must be made to follow the words. 

And what of the form of narrative 1 and the narrative itself? 
does it not follow the character 2 of the mind? 

Of course. 

And all else follows the form ? 

Yes. 

Then reasonableness, harmoniousness, gracefulness, and 
good proportion 3 , attend upon a good character, not the fool- 
ishness which we call by the pet name of "goodnature," but e 
the mind which has in real truth its character rightly and 
beautifully constituted. 

Unquestionably. 

Must not these qualities be pursued by our young men in 
every way 4 if they are to do their duty 5 ? 

1 See 392 c. 

2 Ethos = " disposition," a different word from ethos, "custom." It is 
the word from which we, through the Greeks, get the terms "ethics" and 
" ethical." We are very near its true and original meaning when we speak 
of the ethos of a school or college or even of a nation — the habitual, and so 
characteristic, temper or disposition. It is used of an individual in just the 
same sense. 

a These attributes are here given a more general meaning, but their 
names refer back to the discussion just ended, "right speech," "right mode," 
"right gesture," "right rhythm." 

4 Preparing the way for pointing out the above attributes of "music" in 
the whole sphere of plastic art. 

5 See back 370 a and B and 395 b, and forward especially 433 A and 
note ; cf. also 443 C and following. It is important for the rendering of 
this phrase, the key-phrase of the earlier portion of the Republic, that the 

L.ofC. 1—2 



ioo The Republic of Plato. 

Undoubtedly they must. 
401 a And painting, surely, and all similar craftsmanship, is full of 
them ; and so too are weaving and embroidery and house- 
building, and besides, all manufacture of the objects of use : 
and moreover the growth of all living bodies and of all organic 
beings ; for in all of these there is Tightness and wrongness of 
form 1 . And wrongness of form and bad proportion 2 and in- 
harmoniousness are akin to bad thinking 3 and bad character, 
while their opposites are akin to the opposite, a temperate and 
noble character, and are imitations 4 of it. 

Thoroughly so, he said. 



401 b — 403 c. Extension of the principles of 
''•music '''first to plastic art and then to life and conduct*. 

B Are we then to regulate the poets only, compelling them 

difference between Greek and English idiom forces us to supply a substan- 
tive where the Greek has merely a neuter article. "To do their own," 
"Das ihrige zu thun," is all that Plato says. The principle is often thought 
by moderns to be something merely negative, like " minding one's own 
business." But we should get nearer the meaning if we brought in some 
such comparison as taking a part in a piece of music, for which a positive 
capacity and a complete training of it are required. What the training aims 
at is just being explained to us — a perfect and accurate but free and reason- 
able serviceableness — free, because the outer act is to be the very image of 
the thought. 

1 Or " gracefulness and its absence." 

2 Lit. "un-rhythmicalness." 

3 Also = " bad speech" or "narration," in reference to the discussion of 
literature. 

4 "Utterance," "expressions," "representations," "symbols," would 
be other ways of rendering the word "imitation." 

5 This passage, taken in connection with the above, is perhaps the high- 
water mark of Plato's theory of fine art, and contains, as Nettleship observes, 
the pith of what is to be said on the subject. The best means of grasping 
the full bearing of the ideas involved would be found in a study of the life and 
works of the late Mr William Morris and of Mr Ruskin. Ruskin's chapter 



Book III. 101 

to create in their poems the image of the noble character, on 
pain of not making poetry among us, or shall we also regulate 
the other craftsmen and put a stop to their embodying the 
character which is ill-disposed and intemperate and illiberal 
and improper l , either in their pictures or in their buildings or 
in any other productions of craftsmanship, on pain of being 
debarred from working among us, if they cannot obey ; that 
our guardians may not, from being nurtured among images of 
badness, as though in a poisonous pasture, gathering in the c 
course of every day, little by little, many things to feed upon 
from many surroundings, collect before they know it a single 
huge evil within their soul? Shall we not rather seek out 
those craftsmen who are able, by a happy gift, to follow in its 
footsteps the nature of the graceful and beautiful; that as if 
living in a healthy region the young men may be the better for 
it all 2 , from whichsoever of the beautiful works a something 
may strike upon their seeing or their hearing, like a breeze 
bearing health from wholesome places ; bringing them un- d 
consciously from early childhood both to likeness 3 and to 
friendship or harmony with the law of beauty ? 

Yes, he said, this would be by far the best nurture for 
them. 

Then, Glaucon, I said, is not this the reason why music 4 is 
the most sovereign nurture, because nothing else sinks into the 
mind like rhythm and tune 5 , nor seizes it so forcibly as they, 

on "The Place of the Workman in Gothic Architecture" {Stones of Venice), 
and Mr Morris's lecture On the History of Pattern Designing (Joint Lectures 
on Art, 1882) contain the gist of the matter. 

1 More literally " formless" or "ill-formed." 

2 There is a distinct point in the comparison, viz. the feeling we have 
when we go, say, to the sea or to the mountains, that everything round us 
is delightful and does us good. 

3 Likeness and friendship, closely akin for Plato. See 385 C and note. 

4 Music including, as we have seen, every appeal to sense-perception in 
which beauty and ugliness can be discriminated. 

5 To be understood in a larger sense corresponding to the larger sense 



102 The Republic of Plato. 

carrying gracefulness along with them and making the man 
e graceful if he be rightly nurtured, and if not, the contrary? 
And because, once more, he who has been rightly nurtured 
therein will be keenest to perceive shortcomings — what is not 
beautifully wrought or not beautifully grown — and having a just 
repugnance for them will approve all that is beautiful, and 
enjoying it and absorbing it into his soul will grow up in the 
402 a strength of it and become a good and noble man ; whereas all 
that is ugly he will censure and loathe in his very youth, before 
he is able to apprehend a principle ; but when the principle 
comes before him, he who is thus nurtured, above all others, 
will welcome it with the recognition due to that which is his 
own ? 

I certainly think, he said, that these are the reasons for 
which "music" is the right nurture 1 . 

Then, I said, it is just like this; we had finished learning 
our letters when we were able to recognise the letters of the 
alphabet, though their number is so small, in everything in 

of "music." A picture or a house, or one's temper or manners, can be 
" out of tune." 

1 Cf. Aristotle's sentence which summarises the whole view of moral 
education, shared by him with Plato. "Wherefore they (persons who are 
to grasp the principle of morality) must have been trained from their youth 
up to be pleased and to be pained by what they ought." It is the deliberate 
view of the Greek thinkers that the young must be trained through the 
formation of their likings and dislikings by "suggestion" or "imitation" 
on a principle which they do not know, but which exists in society or in 
the teacher's mind. It is thus that they acquire a practical instinct or 
feeling which in all acts and incidents of life is attracted by the right and 
shocked by the wrong. On the basis of this moral experience they can 
apprehend an ethical principle when they come to years of discretion, and 
see their "acquired" instincts justified by a comprehensive purpose. With- 
out such a training they would have nothing to go upon — no real hold of 
what is and what is not workable in life. We may think, in this connection, 
of the feeling which selfish and vulgar habits produce in anyone who has 
had a good home-training, when he first meets with them ; a feeling that he 
simply could not live in that way. 



Book III. 103 

which they are exhibited, and we never neglected them, as if b 
they need not be noticed, either on a small field or on a large, 
but we were eager 1 to discern them in every quarter, considering 
that we should never be scholars till we had that readiness. 

True. 

And so again, we shall not recognise the reflections 2 of 
letters, if they are to be seen anywhere in mirrors or in pools of 
water, until we have learned the letters themselves, but they 
belong to the same science or study ? 

Certainly. 

Well then, to come to my point, in the same way again we shall 
not be "musical 3 ,'' neither ourselves nor the guardians 4 , whom c 
we say that we have to educate, until we recognise the forms of 
temperance and courage and liberality 5 , and all akin to them, 
and again their opposites, everywhere that they are exhibited, 
and notice their presence where they are present, both them- 
selves and their images, and neglect them neither on a small 



1 The identification of will or liking with intelligence in this place is an 
anticipation on a small scale of what Plato maintains throughout. 

2 Images or likenesses. This passage points back to the simile of the 
large and small letters 368 D and forward to the' whole discussion of degrees 
of knowledge in Bk VII. and of imagination in Bk X. Plato is fond of 
the metaphor of shadows and reflections to illustrate a twofold thought : 
{a) That the highest truths have lower symbols and analogies by help of 
which ignorant people (i.e. pretty much mankind as they are) get a glimpse 
of them, (b) That these symbols or analogies, well enough if taken to be 
mere glimpses of truth, are no better than the shadow compared with the 
substance if we try to rely on them as really true. Apparently people used 
to look at eclipses in the reflection in water, as we look at them through 
smoked glass, and this gave him the idea of an image which tells you some 
of the truth, but only by weakening it. "Through" or "in a glass darkly." 
Fine art is for him a system of such symbols. 

3 Just as in the case compared we were said not to be "scholars.'' 

4 The guardians are obviously becoming ourselves — what we should 
like to be. 

5 The character of the true freeman. 



104 The Republic of Plato. 

field nor on a large, but believe them to belong to the same 
art and study 1 ? 

It is necessarily so, he said. 
d So then, I said, the most beautiful sight for him who has 
eyes to see is one who unites the presence of a beautiful 
character in his soul and qualities 2 in his form accordant and 
harmonious therewith, partaking of the same pattern 3 ? 

By far. 

And the most beautiful is the most lovable. 

Of course. 

Then the persons most nearly like this will be those whom 
a cultivated 4 man could love? but he could not love one 
whose nature is discordant. 

No, he answered, not if the defect lay in his soul ; but if it 
were something bodily he might put up with it so far as to be 
fond of him. 

Does our discussion of music appear to you, as to me, to 
be now complete ? for it has ended where it ought to end ; 

1 This passage, modelled on the illustration of learning the alphabet, is 
a description of " musical" education as learning the alphabet of the moral 
world, or learning to read in the moral world. Where, for example, did 
we get our first recognition of courage, and what was it like? Perhaps 
from Richard Coeur-de-lion or Horatius Codes; these would be "images," 
artistic likenesses of it, suggesting a quality rather remote from the uses of 
our life; then we should learn to read it or its opposite in some behaviour 
of our family and ourselves, and so come to form a certain rough recognition 
of it in daily life, probably very imperfect indeed. But such as it is, a very 
great deal depends upon it — what we admire and what we imitate under 
the name of courage, whether gentleness and resolution, or roughness and 
swagger; whether we know real courage when we see it, or not. 

2 "Qualities" supplied to meet the English idiom. Note that Plato 
does not say "a beautiful soul in a beautiful body," but "a beautiful soul 
with a body which expresses its beauty," which explains the true subordi- 
nation much more precisely. 

* Type or mould ; the word e.g. for the canons or outlines of theology, 

379 A - 

4 Lit. " musical." 



Book III. 105 

since surely the end of music ought to be the love of the 
beautiful \ 



Argument. 403 D — 412 b. Training of the body, and 
relation of this training to mental qualities' 2 . 

After music the young men are to be trained in gym- 
nastic ? 

Of course. 

Then in this too they ought to be carefully trained from 
early childhood 3 throughout life. And as I suppose, the 403° 
matter stands thus; but you must help me to consider it. I do 
not think that the body, however good as a body 4 , can by any 

1 "The beautiful" being, as we have seen, the expression of law or 
character (character = a law manifested in our individual mind) in art, 
nature, actual life, and social intercourse. The last paragraph seems to 
indicate, what is often true in our day, that a lad's education may find its 
climax in devotion to some friend whom he thinks perfection. Cf. "and 
to have loved her was a liberal education." The young man, we may say, 
at this stage has by no means a complete science or experience of life, but 
has a real devotion to what is great and good, and a highly trained instinct 
for distinguishing genuine qualities from false pretences. Schiller's Letters 
on the Aesthetic Education of Humanity axe a very good modern elucidation 
of Plato's view. 

2 We have here a very important discussion on the relation between 
"body" and "mind." The central point of it may be contrasted with the 
saying common to-day, "body has its rights as well as mind." What this 
means is probably in a great degree true, as a reaction against useless 
asceticism ; but the expression is incorrect in suggesting a double standard, 
as if bodily excellence were one separate thing, and mental another — as if 
you could first get the one right, and then go on to set the other in order. 
The result of such a view, as Plato shows, is to cut life in two and work 
without comprehensive aim, so that attention to the body will oscillate 
between brutal athleticism and nervous valetudinarianism, while preoccupa- 
tion with culture will become mere effeminacy. 

3 And therefore partly while the musical training is going on. 

4 We hear to-day of mens sana in corpore sano, and are told, quite truly, 
that health is a great step to sanity and goodness. Is Plato saying the 



106 The Republic of Plato. 

excellence of its own make a good mind, but on the contrary 
I think that a good mind by its own excellence brings the 
body into the best state possible ; what do you think? 

I agree, he answered. 

So if we adequately prepare the intelligence and then 
e hand over to it the detailed care of the body, we merely laying 
down the outlines of the course to be followed, not to make a 
long story of it, we should be doing right ? 

Undoubtedly. 

Well, we said that they were to abstain from drinking 1 ; for 
a guardian, surely, is the last person who shall be allowed to 
be drunk, and not know where in the world he is. 

Yes, he said, it is ridiculous for a guardian to need a 
guardian. 

And what about food ? For the men are champions in the 
greatest of contests 2 , are they not? 

Yes. 



contrary of this ? Not if we see what he means. He means that we can- 
not state what we understand by bodily health, and consequently cannot 
secure it, without using standards and purposes dictated by mind. We 
sometimes speak, e.g. of a man as in perfect "animal" health, as if our 
standard was animal life taken apart. But the comparison will not work. 
If a man's health were really that of an animal he would be quite useless 
for the purposes of human life. He would always be asleep or just have 
over-eaten himself, when he was wanted to do anything. Sporting dogs 
and horses would be useless unless man's supervision regulated their food 
and exercise. Their relation to their master is a good example of the 
relation of mere body to mind. Health, for a man, is to be able to do and 
enjoy what a man has to do and enjoy, and his body must be disciplined and 
habituated, to make this possible, in view of the aims and activities which 
determine it. See for Plato's result 410 c. 

1 Note the wide meaning assigned to Gymnastic from the beginning. 
They are to be sober in view of their duty, not because drink is bad for men 
in training; and this is the first rule of their "Gymnastic." Plato's thought 
is not far off the track of St Paul's. 

2 "Soldiers of the idea" or "Knights of the Holy Spirit" would express 
the underlying meaning. 



Book III. 107 

Then would the habit of the men in training 1 whom we 404 a 
know be suitable to them ? 

Perhaps. 

But, I said, this is a sleepy sort of habit, and the health is 
easily upset in it ; or do you not see that these athletes sleep 
through their life and have serious and severe illnesses on the 
slightest departure from their established diet ? 

I do. 

Then, I continued, we need a finer sort of training for our 
military 2 champions, since they have to be as wakeful as dogs, 
and to see and hear with the greatest acuteness, and, as on 
their campaigns they undergo all sorts of changes of drinking b 
water and food and summer heat and winter cold, not to be 
easily upset in health 3 . 

So I think. 

Then would not the best gymnastic be one akin to the 
music which we described just now ? 

How do you mean ? 

A simple and reasonable gymnastic ; that preparatory for 
war would be the most so. 

In what way? 

Why, I answered, Homer 4 is enough to teach us that. For 



1 Here occurs in its natural sense the word asketae, "practisers" or men 
in training, from which the fateful term "ascetic" is derived. 

2 War is their duty in defence of the city. It is also, as this sentence 
points out, a simple but effective type of subordination of the body to a 
general purpose of life, as opposed to the mere cultivation of muscular 
development or of some single feat of strength or skill. Sparta was com- 
mended by Aristotle in that she trained her men suitably for war, but 
censured in that she trained them for no higher purpose. Plato means to 
profit by Sparta's example but not to stop there. 

3 " We have no lack of the sleepy and brutalised athlete who probably 
could not serve on a campaign or a geographical expedition." 

Nettleship in HeUenica. 

4 Plato enjoys caricaturing the current use of Homer as a master of 
wisdom, necessitating of course the wildest interpretation of him. 



108 The Republic of Plato. 

you are aware that on the campaign, at the heroes' banquets, 
c he neither gives them fish for dinner, though they were on the 
seashore of the Hellespont, nor boiled meat, but only roast, 
which would be easiest for soldiers to procure ; for everywhere, 
we may say, it is more convenient to use the fire itself than to 
carry pots and pans about. 

Very much so. 

Moreover, as I think, Homer never makes mention of sweet 
sauces ; or even our everyday men in training know this, that 
to have one's body in good condition one must abstain from 
everything of that kind. 
d Yes, he said, they are quite rightly convinced of it, and they 
do abstain. 

And, my dear Sir, you seem likely not to approve of Syra- 
cusan courses and Sicilian multiplicity 1 of savouries if our views 
seem to you to be correct. 

I am sure I do not. 

Then you would disapprove of men having intimacy with 
grisettes from Corinth, if they are to be really sound in body. 

Absolutely. 

And the luxuries, as they are thought, of Athenian confec- 
tionery ? 

Necessarily we reject them. 

For I suppose we should be right in likening such diet and 
E life as theirs to melody and song composed in all modes and 
in all rhythms. 

No doubt. 

1 "Multiple" and "multiplicity." The Greek adjective poikilos, or 
substantive poikilia, seems to express the very essence of all that Plato 
censured in the civilisation of his day. They seem to mean, to begin with, 
any surface that shows varied lights or colours — a "dappled" stag, a 
painted or inlaid surface, or the arts of painting, inlaying and embroidery. 
Then they are used of the new music and new poetry, the new cookery, 
the new politics, always to indicate what Plato thinks an evil ; something 
bunt, as the Germans say, variegated, a sea of sensations without form or 
law. 



Book III. 109 

Then as in that case multiplicity engendered intemperance, 
so in this it generates disease, while simplicity of music creates 
temperance in souls, and of gymnastic healthfulness in bodies. 

Most true. 405 a 

And when intemperance and diseases abound in the State, 
are there not opened many courts of law and doctors' consult- 
ing rooms, and the legal and medical professions put on an air 
of importance, because even free men 1 run after them in 
crowds and earnestly? 

Of course they will, he said. 



Argument. 405 a — 408 c. A subdivision of the discussion 
of Gymnastic or the relation of body to mind, dealing with 
Valetudinarianism as the complementary case to Athleticism i7i 
the vulgar sense. You may either make body an end, apart from 
mind, as mere muscular development or capacity for some one 
feat, or again as life in contrast to the uses of life. In either case 
the simple error is that you. break up the unity of life, and take 
gymnastic as an end in itself instead of an element in the discipline 
which makes a man, i.e., in Platds sense, take Body as an end 
apart from Mind. 

Now could you have a greater proof of the badness and 
ugliness of education in the State than the need of first-rate 
doctors and judges, not merely among the inferior people and 
the handworkers, but among those who pretend to have been 
nurtured after the fashion of freemen ? Or do you not think 
it a shameful thing, and a great proof of uneducatedness, to be b 
obliged to get our justice as an import from other persons, as 
masters and judges over us, and to have none of our own ? 

1 A bitter satire, see following sentences. Even admitting that some 
poor unlucky servant might have to get honesty or health from a magistrate 
or doctor, you would have thought that a gentleman ought to possess them 
of his own. Again an anticipation of St Paul. Cf. 1 Corinthians vi. 1. 



no The Republic of Plato. 

The most shameful of all things, he replied. 

Do you think, I continued, that it is more shameful than 
this, that a man should not merely spend the greater part of 
his life in law courts as defendant and prosecutor, but even, by 
inexperience of what is noble, should be led to glory in this 
very thing, that is to say, in being a master of wrong-doing, 
c competent in every twist and turn, able to find a way through 
every exit, wriggling out of reach to avoid submitting to justice, 
and all this for gains of little or no value, being ignorant how 
much nobler and better it is to arrange a life for himself that 
will have no need of a sleepy judge 1 ? 

No, he answered, this is more shameful than the other. 

But to need the doctor's art, I said, not merely for wounds 
or from being attacked by epidemic diseases, but from being 
d filled with gales and currents like so many lakes, owing to 
idleness and the sort of diet we described, forcing the polite 
Asclepiadae 2 to baptise our ailments with names like flatulence 
and catarrh — do you not think it a shame ? 

Why really those are novel and ridiculous names for 
diseases. 

Such as, I imagine, did not exist in Asclepius' day ; and I 

e infer 8 it, because his very sons, when at Troy the nurse gave 

406 a the wounded Eurypylus Pramneian wine with flour scattered 

into it and cheese grated over it, which one would think inflam- 

1 It is lo be remembered that the love of litigation was one of the chief 
vices charged against the Athenian democracy by hostile critics. In the 
great time of Athenian supremacy the citizens of Athens had formed to a 
great extent the supreme court of justice for a large number of dependent 
states. Neither the motives nor the results of this system were altogether 
bad, but it gave a handle to hostile criticism. 

2 Descendants of Asclepius (Aesculapius) = " doctors." 

3 Compare 404 B and c for this parody of the current way of appealing 
to Homer. While humourously illustrating the point of the present passage, 
Plato is suggesting, in his double-edged way, how absolutely unfit Homer 
is to give rules to a civilised society. He quotes from memory ; it is Machaon, 
not Eurypylus, who is thus treated. //. 11. 624. 



Book III. in 

matory, found no fault with her, and passed no censure on 
Patroklus who was in charge of the treatment. 

Most certainly, he replied, it was a strange drink for a man 
in that condition. 

Not, I said, if you reflect that up to that time the Ascle- 
piadae made no use of our modern medical art, the nurse of b 
diseases; not, as the story goes, till Herodicus lived; and 
Herodicus, who was a trainer 1 and became an invalid, mixed 
up gymnastic with the medical art, till he tormented first him- 
self, and subsequently many others. 

In what way ? 

By lengthening out his death, I replied. For attending 
upon his disease, which was a mortal one, while he was un- 
able, I take it, to cure himself, yet he lived his whole life 
long undergoing treatment, with no leisure for anything, in 
misery if he departed a jot from his accustomed rule of life ; 
and in one long death-struggle, so great was his cunning, he 
arrived at old age 2 . 

Then that was a fine reward which he won by his art. 

And one likely to come, I said, to him who did not know 
that from no ignorance 3 or inexperience did Asclepius refuse to c 



1 A trainer of boys and young men in athletics ; such men formed a 
regular profession at Athens, and the attendance on them was a part of 
education. 

- Jowett regrets that in the whole of this passage Plato seems to 
disparage attention to diet, which is one of the most effective means by 
which the soul can govern and aid the body. But we must bear in mind 
that Plato is asserting a fundamental truth as to man's whole aim and 
reason in existing, as the splendid sentences prove, which immediately 
follow. There is plenty of room for urging a reasonable carefulness and 
self-restraint in matters of diet, in the whole idea of "Gymnastic" as 
subordinate to the aim of life, which this very passage insists on. 

3 This sentence, passing from sheer fun in the imagination of Asclepius' 
hidden wisdom, as shown by his leaving the Homeric doctor to approve of 
a wine-posset for a wounded man, to a white-hot passion and irony in the 
censure of our social blindness, is in Plato's most characteristic vein. We 



112 The Republic of Plato. 

reveal this type of medicine to his descendants, but because he 
knew that in all law-abiding commonwealths there is a certain 
work assigned to every man in the State which it is necessary for 
him to pursue, and none has leisure to be sick and under treat- 
ment his whole life long; which we, absurdly, perceive in the 
case of the working class ; but do not perceive in the case of 
the rich and those who pass for prosperous. 

How? he asked. 
d A carpenter, I answered, when he is ill, desires the doctor 
to give him a drug to drink that he may throw up the evil 1 , or 
to rid him of it by a downward purge or by cautery or the 
knife. But if any man orders him a prolonged cure 2 , putting 
felt packing round his head and so forth, he soon says that he 
has no leisure to be ill, and it is no gain to him to live in that 
way, giving his attention to his disease and neglecting the 
industry before him ; and after that, saying farewell to such a 
e physician, he returns to his customary mode of living, regains 
his health, and lives in discharge of his duty 3 ; or, if his body 
is not strong enough to go through with it, he dies and is 
rid of his troubles. 

Yes, and for a man in that position it is admitted that this 
is the right dealing with medicine. 
407 a Is that, I asked, because he had a work to do, which if he 
did not discharge, he found life not worth living ? 

Plainly so. 

But the wealthy man, as we affirm, has no such work set 
before him, from which if he is compelled to abstain he does 
not care to live. 

shall often find it a good hint to interpret Plato as we should interpret 
Mr Ruskin. 

1 Lit. " the disease," thought of as a material thing. Of course there 
often may be a definite poison or growth in which the disease is embodied. 
Cf. 407 D, "some definite" or "isolable"' disease. 

2 Lit. " diet," way of life. 

3 Lit. "doing his own." See note above. 



Book III. 113 

Certainly he is not said to have one. 

No, for you do not attend to Phocylides, how he says 
that when one has got enough to live on, one should practise 
excellence 1 . 

And, I should think, before that. 

Do not let us quarrel with him on that point, I said ; but 
let us make it clear to ourselves whether the rich man has this 2 
to practise, and apart from it, his life is not worth living, 
or whether valetudinarianism, though an obstacle in the way of b 
attending to carpenter's work and the rest of the crafts, is 
yet no hindrance to what Phocylides exhorts 3 . 

Yes, indeed, was the reply, there is perhaps no greater 
hindrance than this supererogatory care of the body, which 
goes beyond "Gymnastic 4 "; it is inconvenient both for the 
duties of estate management, for military service, and for 
sedentary offices 5 in the city. 

1 The word might often be rendered virtue. But we must note that it 
has not the narrowness of our terms virtue or morality. See just below, 
the sentence beginning " it is inconvenient " for some recognised spheres of 
" excellence." 

2 Viz. excellence or virtue. 

3 We should say, "Why no. You can be good on a sick bed ; many of 
our types of religious and virtuous living are taken from such sufferers." 
But this does not meet Plato's point, {a) It is a great sin to be on a sick- 
bed if you could be anywhere else, (b) Much of our sick-bed virtue would 
seem a sentimental thing to a Greek, just as his notion of heroism seems 
narrow to us. Excellence, for Plato, means doing something well. 

4 Gymnastic is taken to include all such diet and training as is bona fide 
necessary for physical serviceableness. See above on Jowett's criticism, 
note 2, p. in. 

5 Three ways of life in which " excellence " was open to a well-to-do 
citizen ; the duties of household and estate management (lit. "economy"), 
of defending the commonwealth, and of justice and administration. As to 
the duty of military service, we should bear in mind that an Athenian's 
share in war did not consist in reading exciting telegrams at the breakfast 
table. Self-defence was a serious, constant and essential part of the business 
of every State, and military service was a duty which might fall any day on 
any man physically able to discharge it. Socrates was holder of what we 

B. 8 



114 The Republic of Plato. 

And the most serious thing of all is that it is constantly 
throwing difficulties in the way of study in any shape, and of 
any consideration or meditation with oneself, perpetually 
c suspecting headaches and fits of giddiness, and imputing them 
to be produced by the pursuit of knowledge 1 , so as to present 
obstacles at every point where excellence is practised and 
tested in that direction 2 ; for it makes you continually think 
yourself ill, and never cease from being in pangs about your 
body. 

It is likely, he said. 

Then must we not say that Asclepius knew all this as well 
as we, and that he, thinking of those who by nature and con- 
d duct are healthy in body, but are suffering from some specific 
ailment, for them, and for their condition, revealed the medical 
art, and expelling their ailments by drugs and by the knife 
enjoined upon them their customary way of living, that he might 
not interfere with their citizen duties ; whilst, on the other hand, 
in the case of bodies which are penetrated through and through 
with disease, he did not attempt by rules of diet, drawing off 
and adding in minute quantities 3 , to make such a man's life a 
long and wretched one, and to let him beget, as is probable, 



should call the Victoria Cross, for gallantry in rescuing a comrade In 
action. 

1 Lit. "by philosophy." 

2 The pursuit of knowledge or wisdom, the life of the scholar, man of 
science, or any student with the true spirit of study, is another form in 
which excellence or virtue may be practised; it is higher than the civic 
excellences above mentioned, the hindrances to it being reckoned " the 
most serious," but does not of course exclude them. It is a large and interest- 
ing question what the great Greek thinkers really took to be the relation of 
study and science to life. We should be very careful to understand what 
they actually say, and not to run off with superficial notions, mostly borrowed 
from later ages, when the unity of life had been lost. 

3 The metaphor is apparently that of keeping a fluid at a certain level 
by adding and drawing off; an image of the delicate balance to be maintained 
in a body always tending to go wrong. 



Book III. 115 

offspring no better than himself 1 ; but he thought it wrong, 
we must say, to give medical treatment to any one who is 
unable to live in the common course of life, deeming him e 
an unprofitable person both to himself and to the State 2 ? 

Asclepius was a statesman by your account. 

Obviously, I said ; and do not you see how, because he 
was so, his sons not only proved good warriors at Troy, but 
adopted the treatment which I describe ? Or do you not 40S a 
remember how in Menelaus' case, after his wound when 
Pandarus shot him, "they squeezed out the blood 3 , and 
spread soothing unguents upon the wound," but what he was 
to drink or eat after that they no more prescribed to him than 
to Eurypylus? for they held that their remedies were sufficient 
to cure men who previous to their wounds were of healthy and 
orderly life, even if at the moment they chanced to drink a b 
wine-posset; while as to people who were sickly by nature and 
intemperate, they thought it unprofitable both for themselves 
and for everyone else that they should go on living, and held 
that their art ought not to be for the benefit of these, nor ought 
they to have medical treatment even if they were richer than 
Midas. 

You describe the sons of Asclepius as very clever people. 

So I ought, I answered him. And yet the tragic poets and 
Pindar, flatly contradicting us, say both that Asclepius was the 
son of Apollo, and that he was persuaded by gold to restore a c 

1 This anticipates the question, at the present moment a very urgent one, 
■of the seclusion of certain classes of afflicted persons, and of the duty on the 
part of others to abstain from marriage. 

2 The ideas of abstinence and seclusion have now replaced the idea of 
extirpation, at which Plato hints here and in 410 A. Though we are ready 
to undertake the care and maintenance of the weaklings themselves, the 
central problem of hindering them from becoming a source of social 
degeneration is for us far more arduous than for Plato's age, just because 
of this greater scrupulosity. 

3 I.e. drew the lips of the wound together (Campbell), Iliad IX. 218. 
A slight variation shows that Plato is again quoting from memory. 

8—2 



u6 The Republic of Plato. 

wealthy man who was already dead, for which reason, indeed, 
they say he was struck by a thunder-bolt. But we, in accord- 
ance with what we said before 1 , do not believe both their 
stories, but, we shall affirm, if he was the son of a god, he was 
not meanly covetous, and if he was meanly covetous he was not 
the son of a god. 

Quite right, he said, so far. 



Argument. 408 c — 410 a. Comparison and co-operation of 
physical and moral the?-apeutic. In what sense the experience of 
evil is a factor in the knowledge of good. 

But what do you say about this, Socrates? Ought we not 
to have good physicians in the city ? And they would be more 
D especially such as have handled the greatest number of healthy 
persons and the greatest number of diseased ; and in the same 
way the best judges would be those who had held intercourse 
with all kinds of natures. 

Most certainly, I said, I recognise good physicians ; but do 
you know whom I think to be such ? 

I shall know if you tell me. 

Well, I will try, I said ; but you have asked about two 
different subjects in the same sentence. 

In what way? 

We should get the most skilful physicians 2 , I said, if from 

their youngest days, besides learning their art, they were to 

come in contact with the greatest number of most defective 

e bodies, and were themselves to suffer from all ailments, and to 

1 See 391 D. 

2 In pressing the distinction he has in mind, Socrates seems, as Camp- 
bell observes, to decline answering Glaucoivs point, which is that in the 
healthy state the physician will not find the required experience. The 
difficulty is a real one, and is met to-day by the collection and selection of 
case> which is the essence of the hospital system. In this way we so to 
speak make the most of the illness which we have. 



Book III. 117 

be by nature not entirely healthy 1 . For, I imagine, they do 
not treat the body with the body 2 ; if they did, it would never 
have been allowable for their bodies to be or to become de- 
fective ; but they treat the body with their mind, for which it is 
not possible, if it has become or is defective, to treat anything 
well. 

True, he said. 

But the judge, my friend, rules over mind 3 with mind, for 4°9 A 
which it is not allowable to have been nurtured among evil 
minds from its earliest days, and to have been associated with 
them, and to have experienced all wrong-doings by having itself 
committed them, so as acutely to infer the crimes of others 
from itself, like diseases in case of the body ; but it ought to 
have passed its youth apart from experience or contact of evil 
character, if it is to be good and noble, and to judge soundly 
in matters of right. Wherefore it is true that in their young days 



1 Jowett observes that there is something in the idea that a physician 
may be aided by some experience of sickness ; may gain in sympathy, for 
instance. 

2 This distinction between bodily and mental contact, and the apparent 
admission that a man may be defective in body without being so in mind, 
may seem to run counter to Plato's main thesis in the relation of Gymnastic 
to Music, viz. that there is no such thing as bodily health or training apart 
from mental health or training. The fact is, Plato's view has two sides, 
which it is hard but necessary to hold together : (a) that body, health, 
strength, and the like, are factors in mind, having their value in the purpose 
and efficiency of life, e.g. 406 — 7 ; (b) that they are only factors, and that 
mind, i.e. the whole purpose and order of intelligent living, can do a great 
deal for and with even an imperfect bodily system. Cf. 403 D, and on 
bridle of Theages 496 B. And note that even 406 — 7 it is not so much 
your being sickly as your giving your whole mind to nothing else, that is 
the mischief. The extraordinary achievements of many people who have 
bad health seem partly due to the fact that in self-defence they cling to 
objects which take them out of their sickly selves; a confirmation, in 
substance, of Plato's view. 

3 Hence, if contact with evil were of use to him, it would be contact of 
the mind with evil, which is prima facie unallowable. 



u8 The Republic of Plato. 

b good men appear innocent and easily deceived by the wicked, 
as not possessing in themselves patterns of like affections with 
the bad. 

Yes, he said, this is very apt indeed to befall them. 

Therefore, I said, a good judge should not be young but 
old, having come late to the study of the nature of iniquity; 
not observing it as his own and seated in his own soul, but 
having practised through long years to discern its evil nature, 
outside him and in other souls, by the instrumentality of 
knowledge 1 and not of his own experience, 
c Certainly such a judge is of the finest type. 

Yes, and good too, to answer your question 2 ; for he who 
has a good mind is good. But your clever and suspicious 
fellow, who has himself done many wrongs, and fancies himself 
so thorough and so knowing, appears clever in his precautions 
when among his likes, judging everything by the patterns he 
has in himself; but when he comes in contact with good men 
and men no longer young, then again he makes a poor appear- 
ance, being distrustful out of season, and not understanding a 
d healthy character, because he possesses no pattern of the kind ; 
but as he meets bad people oftener than good he seems to 
himself and others a wise man rather than a fool. 

That is absolutely true. 

Then it is not in a man like this that we must look for the 
good and wise judge, but in the former. For badness can 
never know both excellence and itself; but excellence, in a 
nature educated by time, will acquire knowledge of itself and 



1 Cf. 366 c. 

2 See 408 c. " Good " here, good both as a judge and as a man. The 
question then is practically, must not good judges have experience of bad 
men ? IMato answers the point which he considers to underlie it, by saying, 
"The good judge must be a good man; i.e. it is not necessary that he 
should take badness into his own soul." He explains his answer further 
409 n below. 



Book III. 1 1 9 

of badness alike 1 . So, as seems to me, it is this man, and not e 
the villain, who learns to be wise. 

I agree, he said. 

Then will you not establish by law in your State such a 
medical art 2 as we referred to 3 , in conjunction with a similar 
judicial art 2 , which together shall give treatment to those of 410 a 
your citizens who are well-natured in body and soul; but those 
who are not, if their defect be bodily, they shall permit to die, 
while those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they 
shall themselves put to death 4 ? 

This has certainly been shown to be the best course both 
for the patients themselves and for the State. 

1 The idea here stated is one of great importance. It implies that 
badness is a narrowness in human nature, while goodness is its complete- 
ness. If you are really good, so to speak, you are all that a bad man is 
and something more. This is the radical answer to the difficulty which 
Plato has in mind all through this passage, and which we know in 
many forms, " Can one understand life and human nature, without being 
bad oneself? " 

2 The word "Art" is inserted by the translator to suit the English 
idiom. The words in the Greek, "medical" and "judicial," are, according 
to Greek usage, simply feminine adjectives, such as those from which our 
words logic, music, gymnastic, are derived. Mathematics, Ethics and 
Politics have a similar derivation, and I do not know why we have made 
plurals of them. The point is that the Greek does not decide whether the 
substantive is to be "art," "science" or "method," all of which could be 
joined with such adjectives, and probably the adjectives had come to be 
thought of as independent terms, in fact as substantives. 

3 E.g. 407 D. 

4 Note in this passage: (a) the suggestion of a co-operation between 
medical and judicial practice in the preservation of the physical and moral 
health of the community — a suggestion anticipating immense departments 
of administration and legislation, and whole provinces of social opinion at 
the present day ; cf. notes on 407 : and {b) the implication of a therapeutic 
and corrective theory of punishment, raising large problems which cannot 
be treated here. See too 380 1:. , 



120 The Republic of Plato. 

Argument. 410 b — 412 b. Final explanation of the aim of 
gymnastic and — almost — its inclusion in music. 

Then it is clear that our young men will take good care 
not to come in need of the judicial art, using that simple music 
which we affirmed to generate temperance 1 . 

No doubt, he said. 
b Then will not this same be the 2 track on which the man 
trained in music will pursue gymnastic and attain it if he 
chooses, so as not to need the medical art 3 , except on some 
special compulsion ? 

Indeed I think so. 

His actual gymnastic exercises and tasks he will work at 
rather with a view to the spirited element of his nature, and 
as means of awakening it, than for bodily strength ; not as 
ordinary competitors regulate their food and their tasks for the 
sake of muscular power. 

Quite right, 
c Then those who institute an education in music and gym- 
nastic do not institute it for the reason which some suppose, 
that they might treat the body by the one 4 , and the soul by the 
other ? 

How then ? 

It is probable that they institute both of them principally 
for the sake of the soul c . 

1 404 E. 

2 Viz. that indicated by the " simple " music. 

3 As the man qua trained in music did not need the judicial art. 

4 See 403 D and note. 

5 This is the climax of the idea suggested in 403 D. Body is subordinate 
to mind as an instrument to be moulded for its purposes; and further, bodily 
training actually is a part of moral and intellectual training, through the 
elements of character and intelligence which are concerned in all athletic 
activity, which is bodily activity par excellence. It is not easy to say exactly 
what we mean by bodily in this sense of "athletic"; reading and writing, for 
instance, are activities in which we use our bodies, but are not, as ordinarily 



V 



Book III. 121 

How do you mean ? 

Do you not notice, I said, what disposition grows up in the 
very mind of men who spend their whole life in gymnastic 1 , 
and never touch music ? or in those who are of the contrary 
temper? 

Disposition in respect of what ? he asked. d 

In respect of fierceness and hardness, and their contraries, 
softness and gentleness, I said. 

I notice, he replied, that those who have devoted them- 
selves to unmixed gymnastic 2 turn out fiercer than is right, 
and those who have done so with music become softer than is 
proper for them. 

pursued, athletic. We mean exercise that makes serious calls on the body, 
needing both strength and skill; and it is all the better if it demands 
endurance, courage, and the spirit of co-operation. We are sometimes told 
that all fine art is athletic, i.e. a difficult bodily achievement, and indeed 
the principle of Plato's gymnastic would cover the theory of manual training 
and the educational value of handicrafts (James, Talks to Teachers, 147), 
though he has not so applied it. Here Music and Gymnastic obviously 
would have a meeting-point. 

1 Remark the wide meaning of Gymnastic, including war and field sport 
as well as the training for the great Olympic and similar competitions, which 
were to the Greeks more than the Derby or the international cricket matches 
or yacht races are to us. 

2 Plato writes here and in the next two sentences as if the relation of 
Gymnastic and Music consisted in their acting on different mental elements 
and in opposite ways; as if Gymnastic simply " strung up " the pugnacious 
and competitive " spiritedness," and Music simply "relaxed" further the 
refined and gentle "love of culture." But just below, 411 A, he says 
distinctly that "Music" acts on the "spiritedness" by tempering it, and 
it is plain also that Gymnastic must be thought of both as disciplining the 
"spiritedness," and as bracing up the love of culture. Indeed, interpreting 
bodily training, as above suggested, in the light of manual and artistic ability, 
not to speak of the discipline of games and dancing, it is quite clear that 
Gymnastic must be really continuous with Music and in fact a mere branch 
of the same educational influence. Plato 01 course adopts picturesque 
expressions which seem to break up the mind into parts; but we must 
remember that spiritedness and love of culture are only ways of behaving 
on the part of a single nature. 



122 The Republic of Plato. 

Well, I said, and their fierceness will be produced by the 
spiritedness of their nature, which if rightly nurtured will be 
courageous, but if strung up beyond the right point will in all 
probability become hard and intractable. 

I think so. 
e And again, their gentleness will belong to the culture- 
loving 1 nature; and if it is too much relaxed it will be softer 
than it ought, but being properly nurtured will be gentle and 
orderly. 

It is so. 

And we say that the guardians 2 ought to have both of these 
natures. 

They ought. 

Then ought not these to be brought into harmony 3 with 
one another? 

Not a doubt of it. 

And he who has been brought into harmony has a soul 
both temperate and brave ? 
411 a Just so. 

And the soul of the un-harmonised is both cowardly and 
clownish 4 ? 

Utterly. 

1 Lit. " philosophic," see 375 E. 

2 Who are in fact ourselves as we ought to be, a type of the complete 
man, the largest animal nature expanded into a spiritual being. Cf. 
375—6- 

I.e. is not this an essential of any education which can be called 
complete? 

4 Lit. "rustic," which may seem to us a strange opposite for temperate. 
Temperance, gentleness, and orderliness are all the outcome of the culture- 
loving disposition, which strikes the right note, so to speak, on all occasions 
of conduct. Clownishness, the vice of the " churl in spirit," is conceived 
as the having no sense of law in oneself or of consideration for others. 
From this point, at which the idea of harmonising the sides of man's nature 
is introduced, it becomes more and more clear that whichever side is directly 
influenced, both are affected. 



Book III. 123 

So when one surrenders himself to music, to let it breathe 
and gush over his soul through his ears, as if they were a 
funnel, the sweet and soft and plaintive modes which we were 
mentioning 1 , and he passes his whole life long humming to 
himself and under the glamour of song 2 , then to begin with, if b 
he had any spiritedness, he softens it 3 like iron, and makes it 
useful, instead of useless and hard ; but when he goes on 
unremittingly till it 4 is spell-bound, from that point onwards 
he begins to melt and dissolve it, till he has melted his spirit 
away, and as it were cut the sinews out of his soul, and made 
it but a soft 5 warrior. 

Exactly so. 

And if he deal with a mind which from the beginning is by 
nature spiritless, he soon does the work ; but if it is spirited, 
by weakening the spirit he makes it ill-balanced, quickly pro- c 
voked and quickly extinguished on trifling occasions. Such 
people are made irritable and passionate in place of spirited 
and are full of ill-temper 6 . 

1 398 D and E, 399 A. 2 Campbell, in loc. 

3 I.e. apparently, makes it " mild " as opposed to brittle. 

4 His spiritedness. 

5 " Softness" is here the direct effect of music on the "spirited" nature, 
but 410 E above it came from over-relaxation of the " culture-loving " 
nature. It is plain that Plato sees himself to be dealing with a continuous 
nature, just as his temperance and bravery tend to pass into one another 
through the idea of self-control. See 386—9. 

6 Irritability and ill-temper, then, may arise in an ardent disposition 
from what would commonly be regarded as softening influences, i.e. from 
sentimental nurture, and an absence of action, strife and danger. It is a 
true and subtle remark, and makes us feel the reality of the Greek view 
that with the gift of self-assertion and resentment as with other gifts we 
need discipline and practice to teach us "how, when, and with whom, to 
be angry." Cf. Tennyson's Sailor-boy: 

" God help me, save I take my part 
Of danger on the roaring sea, 
A devil rises in my heart 

Far worse than any death to me." 



124 The Republic of Plato. 

Completely so. 

And again, when a man works hard in the way of gymnastic, 
and feeds thoroughly well, and never touches music or the 
pursuit of culture 1 , the first thing is, is it not? that in his good 
bodily condition he is filled with confidence and spirit, and 
becomes more valiant than he was. 

Very much so. 

Well now ; when he does nothing else, and holds no sort 
of communion with the Muse 2 , then, even if there was some- 
i> thing of studiousness in his soul, since it is given no taste of 
study or research, and partakes 3 of no discourse or "music" in 
any shape, it grows weak and deaf and blind, because it is 
never awakened nor fed nor are its senses purged' 4 . 

Just so. 

Such an one, I imagine, becomes a hater of thinking 5 and 
an uncultivated man 6 , and gives up making use of persuasion 
e by means of reasoning, but carries through everything by 
violence and savageness like a brute, and lives in a state of 
unintelligence and plundering, full of inharmoniousness and 
ungraciousness. 

It is absolutely so. 

Then, for these two 7 , I shall say that — as seems natural — 

1 Lit. Philosophy. 

2 As goddess of Music. 

3 "Tastes" and "partakes" — note the metaphor of food. The germ 
of studiousness in the soul is like a plant or young animal ; it must have its 
food. This notion of the mind as an organism depending on nurture and 
atmosphere is at the root of Plato's educational theory. See above all 
401 B and c. 

4 His senses are not stimulated, and so never clear themselves of 
obstructions. 

5 Lit. a hater of "discourses," i.e. of all shapes of coherent thinking or 
reasoning whether with or without writing or speech. 

6 " Anti-musical," in Plato's sense of "music"; a Philistine. 

7 I.e. the two parts, factors or sides of mind, just about to be 
mentioned. 



Book III. 125 

two arts have been given by some god to mankind, music that 
is and gymnastic for the spirited and the wisdom-loving ; not 
for mind and body, unless incidentally, but for those two 1 , that 
they may be brought into tune with one another, being strung 4 12 A 
up and relaxed to the proper pitch 2 . 

It does seem natural, he assented. 

Then him who best mingles gymnastic with music and 
applies them to the mind in most due measure, him we should 
most rightly pronounce to be absolutely the best musician and 
the greatest master of harmony, in a far higher sense than one 
who tunes the strings to each other 3 . 

With good reason, Socrates, he said. 

Then, Glaucon, will it not always be necessary to have 
some such controller 4 in our State, if the polity is not to perish? b 

It will be necessary in the highest possible degree. 

1 The spirited and the wisdom-loving. 

2 The two arts were definitely introduced 376 E as music for the mind, 
and gymnastic for the body. In 410 B — E it becomes clear that both are 
really addressed to sides of the mind, and there is a tendency to recognise 
(411 a) that each of them affects the whole mind, which is of course the 
case. Still the original distinction is so far retained that the principal effect 
of " music" is to refine or "relax," and the principal effect of gymnastic to 
brace or "string up" the moral frame. This is true and important, because 
it removes any impression, which 386 A might have produced, as if literary 
teaching could confer the power of action, apart from the exercise of the 
active nature. In fact, music and gymnastic are ultimately parts in the 
greater music of life, 412 A, the one being on the whole the training in 
reflection, and the other the training in action. The true or ultimate 
music is elsewhere said to be Philosophy, which means for Plato the fullest 
expansion of human faculty, alike moral and intellectual. 

3 "We have not yet found the best way 'to blend music with gymnastic 
and apply them proportionately to the soul ' of the average schoolboy." 
Nettleship in Ilelleiiica, p. 133. 

4 The suggestion of "a controller" is of course a purely formal and 
incidental way of expressing the view that the maintenance of education 
on the lines laid clown is a fundamental necessity for the State. Even if 
Plato held it to be important that there should be, so to say, a Minister of 
Education, the question on which Plato's voice is of value to us is what 



126 The Republic of Plato. 



Argument. 412 b — 4 1 4 b. Further selection of the guardians 
after or in the course of education, and the qualities determining it. 
Cf for the first selection 374 e, and for a later one in the more 
developed educational scheme 535 a ff. and 539 d ff. 

The outlines of their education and nurture then will be 
these. For why should we describe their dances and field 
sports and hunting and contests in athletics and in horseman- 
ship 1 ? For it is pretty clear that they must be in accordance 
with these outlines ; and so not difficult to contrive. 

Perhaps not. 
c Well, I said, and what is the next distinction we have to 
lay down ? Is it not which of these very men are to rule and 
to be ruled ? 

It is. 

It is plain that the rulers ought to be the elder, and the 
ruled the younger ? 

It is plain. 

And that the best of them must be the rulers ? 

Yes. 



sort of education is to be maintained, not by what governmental machinery 
we can maintain it. Comments upon the particular form of State control 
in which Plato embodied his ideas are really beside the mark in dealing with 
the substance of those ideas. 

1 Note that all this is an explanation of the component parts of the 
gymnastic training, which in the dancing, as in other respects (see notes 
401 — 2), runs into the music. We see then that we are not to understand 
by Gymnastic merely the feats of the gymnasium (in its modern sense) or 
the wrestling ring, but the whole round of active pursuits open to a Greek 
citizen, practised with an educational purpose. Some taste of war was 
clearly included, 467 D and 537 B, and the age set apart for the special 
gymnastic training, 18 — 20, shows that the garrison and patrol duty of the 
young men in Attica was in Plato's mind. Their "record" in all this, with 
their social conduct in scenes of pleasure and the like, was to determine 
their future, 413 E. 



Book III. 127 

And so, since the rulers are to be best of guardians, they 
must be the most guardian-like of the city 1 ? 

Yes. 

Then they must be both sagacious and capable for that end, 
and moreover men who will care for the State. 

It is so. 

And a man will care for that more than all else, which it d 
happens that he loves. 

Necessarily. 

And further he will love that more than all else which he 
thinks to have the same interests 2 with himself, believing that 
when it fares well he too, in consequence, fares well, and when 
it does not, the contrary. 

It is so. 

Then we must select from among all the guardians such men 
as shall appear to us above all others, when we look into the 
matter, likely to do all their life long with the fullest zeal what E 
they believe to be advantageous to the commonwealth, and 
under no circumstances to consent to do what they think not. 

Yes, they are the right men. 

Then I think that a watch must be kept upon them at all 
ages, to note whether they are guardian-like 3 of this doctrine, 
and neither by witchery nor by force can be brought to forget 
and to let go the opinion 4 that they ought to do what is best 
for the commonwealth. 

1 I.e. have the quality of guardians- of- the-city in its strongest form. 
Guardian here again implies a special moral quality, as in 367 a. 

2 The word "interests" is apt to shock the modern reader, and make 
him think of self-interest, and of "interested" as opposed to "disinterested" 
conduct. Yet Plato is only saying "where your treasure is, there will your 
heart be also." 

3 Cf. 429 c. Guardianship of the commonwealth implies moral and 
intellectual guardianship of a principle. 

4 Opinion or impressions ; by no means the highest or surest state of 
mind, according to the full doctrine of the Republic, but appropriate to the 
fcimple phase of education and discipline which is now being considered. 



V 



128 The Republic of Plato. 

What sort of letting-go do you mean ? 

I will tell you, said I. An opinion seems to me to pass 
away from the intelligence either voluntarily or involuntarily ; 
voluntarily when it is false and one learns better, but in- 
voluntarily in every case when it is true. 
413 a I understand the case of the voluntary letting-go, he replied, 
but that of the involuntary I must have explained. 

Why, I said, do you not think with me that men are 
deprived of good things involuntarily, and of bad things 
voluntarily 1 ? or is it not a bad thing to be deceived about 
the truth 2 , and a good thing to be true 3 ? or does it not seem 
to you that to think 4 what is' 3 , is to be true ? 

Yes, he said, you say right, and I think that men are in- 
voluntarily deprived of a true opinion. 

Then are they not either robbed or bewitched or over- 
powered when this befalls them ? 
b Again, he said, I do not understand. 



We may compare it to authority or rule of thumb as contrasted with original 
knowledge and thorough understanding. 

1 In other words, "seek the good voluntarily, and receive the bad 
against their will"; the doctrine that whatever is desired is desired qua 
good, so that the bad can be desired only through ignorance. This 
principle, propounded in too crude a form by Socrates, has been with 
necessary interpretations at the root of all sound systems of ethics. One 
such interpretation is furnished in the present passage, when Plato explains 
what sort of influence may cause one to lose one's hold of a vital truth. 
Aristotle opposed the principle in its crude form, but not substantially. 

- We can hardly render the felicity of the Greek construction which is 
"to be deceived of the truth," i.e. to be defrauded of it: to have it taken 
from you by deception. 

:: To be in state of truth, includes to speak truth and to have it. For 
the whole passage cp. carefully 382, the lie in the soul, i.e. the being in a 
state of falsehood or deception. 

4 Not "think" in the emphatic sense of "understand "; merely in the 
sense in which "I think so"="that is my opinion." 

5 "That which is" a regular phrase for fact or truth in Greek writers, 
often and emphatically used by Plato. 



Book III. 129 

I seem to be as difficult as a tragic poet, I replied. By 
those who are robbed I mean those who are over-persuaded 
and those who forget, because from the latter, time, and from 
the former, argument, withdraws something without their know- 
ledge. Now do you understand ? 

Yes. 

By those who are overpowered I mean those whom some 
pain or suffering causes to change their opinion. 

This too I understand, and you say right. 

And those who are bewitched, I imagine, you would say c 
yourself are those who change their opinion either under the 
charm of pleasure or at the alarm of fear. 

Certainly, he said, everything which deludes may be said to 
bewitch 1 . 

Then as I was just saying, we must examine who are the 
best guardians of the opinion which has been imparted to them, 
that they must do that which at every moment they think it 
best for the commonwealth that they should do. So we must 
observe them from childhood up, setting them tasks 2 in which 
a man might most readily forget such a principle, or be deluded 
out of it ; and him who remembers, and is hard to deceive, we d 



1 Pain seems treated as an actual force; pleasure ranks with fear as a 
source of illusion. Pleasure probably is not sharply distinguished from 
desire. In giving these influences as causes of our loss of attention to a 
principle, Plato is deeply modifying the " Socratic " doctrine as commonly 
understood, viz. that badness is intellectual ignorance. Really no doubt 
Socrates meant his doctrine to re-dehne knowledge and ignorance quite as 
much as virtue and vice. 

2 See note on 412 A. All this language, which suggests a secret and 
despotic mechanism of education, belongs merely to the pictorial setting of 
the book, suggested perhaps in some degree by the Spartan system. Quite 
enough of such emergencies occur in ordinary life or at school and college, 
without artifice, and boys and men are judged by their behaviour in them. 
Cf. Rousseau's Emile, and the extreme artificiality which the "natural" 
system of education there seems to demand. But there again all this is only 
the mise-en-scene, and is not essential to the lesson of the book. 



1 30 The Republic of Plato. 

must select, and him who is not so we must reject. Is it not 
so? 

Yes. 

And again they must be given hard work, and pain 1 , and 
contests, in which these same points should be noted. 

Quite right. 

Further there must be set up a test for them of a third kind 
— in witchery ; and they must be observed, just as people lead 
colts up to noises and alarms, to detect if they are shy ; so in 
the same way while they are young we must bring them to face 
e some sort of terrors, and again we must transfer them into the 
midst of pleasures 2 , testing them much more carefully than 
gold in the fire, to see if a man turns out witchery-proof and of 
proper bearing in it all, being a good guardian of himself 3 and 
of the music which he was taught, and showing himself in all 
these matters to have an orderly and harmonious character, by 
which he will be most profitable both to himself and to the 
commonwealth. And whoever is tested both among boys and 
414 a youths and men and comes out unstained is to be made a ruler 
and guardian of the State, and to be granted distinctions both 
in life and after death, having allotted to him the greatest 
honours both of sepulture and of the other memorials. And 

1 Plato may have had in mind the Spartan scourging trials. But it is 
not necessary to suppose that artificial inflictions are meant. School, 
college, or regimental life afford plenty of tests by annoyance, especially 
if a wise amount of laissez faire is observed by the authorities. The whole 
of this very significant passage is not as much emphasised as it should be, 
in comparison with the more attractive suggestions of 401 — 2. It certainly 
seems to imply some degree of self-government and freedom among the 
young men. The tests are arranged in the same order as the causes of 
non-attention, 413 a — c. 

- To be borne in mind when we are tempted to accuse Plato of narrow- 
ness. They are to have their chances of enjoyment, like men at college or 
in society, and what they make of them will affect their "record," as of 
course it does to-day. 

3 See 367 A. The argument has worked up to the point demanded by 
Adeimantus. 



Book III. 131 

he who is not such is to be rejected 1 . Something of this sort, 
Glaucon, I said, appears to me to be the selection and appoint- 
ment of the rulers and guardians, speaking of it in outline and 
not with exactness. 

To me too, he replied, it appears in some such way. 

Is it not then in real truth most right to give these 2 the B 
name of perfect guardians towards enemies without and to- 
wards friends within, that the latter shall have no desire, and 
the former shall have no power to injure ; while the young 
men, whom but now we were calling guardians shall have 
the name of "auxiliaries" and defenders of the ruler's de- 
crees ? 



Argument. 414 b — 415 d. The allegory of true competition. 

Now how can we contrive, if we tell one splendid false- 
hood of those convenient falsehoods which we spoke of but 
now 3 , to convince if possible the rulers, but failing that, the 
rest of the community ? c 

To what effect ? he asked. 

Nothing new, I said, but a Phoenician 4 story, what has 
happened before now in many places, as the poets affirm and 
are believed 5 , but has not happened in our time, and I do not 

1 A question is sometimes raised about the relation of the guardians' 
education to that of the rest of the citizens. Plato is thinking of education 
at its best, and not primarily of adapting it to different classes, and he says 
little or nothing that bears directly on this problem. But comparing the 
present passage with 415 B — C and the progressive selections of 536 — 7 it 
is evident that, if we worked out the idea, the result would be that all who 
are capable of it are to have the ideally best education (Plato does not think 
there will be many), and the others are to drop off at various ages and stages 
and turn to other walks of life. 

2 The last described, who have been chosen in all the selections. 

3 389 B- 

4 "A miner's story," Pater. 

5 Again the ironical use of the poets. 



132 The Republic of Plato. 

know if it is likely to happen ; and to get it believed needs a 
good deal of persuasion. 

It looks as if you hesitated to tell it ; he remarked. 

And you will think I was quite right to hesitate, when I have 
told it. 

Tell' it, he said, and do not be afraid. 

Well, I proceed to tell it ; and yet I do not know with what 
d face or with words I am to speak ; and I shall attempt to per- 
suade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers, and next the 
rest of the community as well, that all the time we were 
nurturing and educating them, it was so to speak a dream 
in which they thought that all this befell them and was done to 
them, but in reality they were then themselves being fashioned 
and nurtured within the earth beneath, and their arms and the 
e rest of their array were being wrought ; and that when they 
were completely finished, the earth who was their mother sent 
them forth ; and that now it is their duty to take counsel and to 
fight, if any one attack it, for the country in which they are, as 
their mother and their nurse, and to feel for the other citizens 
as their brothers, earth born like them. 

It was not without reason that you were so long ashamed to 
tell your lie. 
415 a Naturally enough, I said; but yet listen to the rest of my 
story. For "All of you in the state are brothers," as we shall 
say to them in telling our tale, " but God in fashioning you 
mingled gold in the creation of as many as are fit to be rulers ; 
and silver, in the auxiliaries ; and iron and brass in the husband- 
men and the artificers. Now as you are all of one family, 
though for the most part you will have children like yourselves, 
B yet sometimes a silver offspring may be born of golden parents 
and a golden offspring of silver, and so all the others too of each 
other 1 . To the rulers then it is the first and greatest command- 

1 The next sentence shews that Plato does not exclude the gold or 
silver springing from the brass or iron, as the form of this sentence might 
suggest. 



Book III. 133 

ment of God, that there shall be nothing of which they shall 
be such good guardians 1 and which they shall watch so in- 
tensely as the children, for what they find to be mingled in 
their souls ; and whether a child of their own is born with an c 
alloy of brass or iron, they shall by no mean compassionate 
him, but assigning him the rank that belongs to his nature they 
shall thrust him down among the mechanics or the husband- 
men, or whether again one is born of these with a tinge of gold 
or silver, having assayed them they shall bring them up higher, 
the former to rulership, the latter to auxiliary rank, seeing that 
an oracle has said that the city must perish when iron or brass 
shall guard it." Now have you any contrivance to make them 
believe this story ? 

By no means, he said, to make these men themselves 2 d 
believe it ; but one might be found to make their sons believe 
it and their descendants and all future men 3 . 

Well, even this, I said, would be of service to make them 
more devoted to the city and to one another ; for I see pretty 
well what you mean 4 . 

Argument. 415 d — 417 b. Dwellings and life of the 
Guardians^ anticipating Plato's treatment of the household. 

So this shall be left where rumour may carry it; but we 
must arm our earth-born and march them forth with the rulers 

1 The fact that Plato requires the government to work the mechanism 
of this career open to talents is quite unimportant to the principle concerned. 
In a certain sense indeed it is always the government, or at least the consti- 
tution and arrangement of the polity, that determines how far such a result 
can or can not be secured. 

2 I.e. the supposed first set; those educated to give the State a 
beginning. 

3 All legends, he implies, were new once, and must have taken time to 
get credence. The Athenians believed themselves to be aboriginal and 
earth-born, which gives point to Plato's suggestion. 

4 Viz., that the first rulers must be taken into our confidence (Camp- 
bell). 



134 The Republic of Plato. 

leading. And on arriving they must look for the most suitable 
place in the city to encamp ; one from which they can most 
e easily restrain those within, should any one not be willing to 
obey the laws, and keep off those without, should an enemy 
come on them like a wolf on the fold ; and after encamping, 
and sacrificing to whom they ought, they must prepare their 
sleeping places. Must they not ? 

Yes, he said. 

Then these should be such as to give shelter in winter, and 
be large enough in summer ? 

Unquestionably they should : I understand you to be speak- 
ing of houses \ 

Yes, I said, but houses for soldiers, not for money-makers. 
416 a How do you mean, he asked, that the latter kind differ from 
the former? 

I will try and tell you, I said. It is surely the most horrible 
of all things and most ruinous to the flock to nurture dogs for 
defending the fold, of such a character and in such a way that 
from intemperance or starvation 2 , or some ill habit besides, the 
dogs themselves set to to injure the sheep, and become like 
wolves instead of dogs 3 . 



1 There is Plato's irony in every line of this conversation, as he gradually 
unveils the difference of the standpoint from which Socrates and Glaucon at 
first regard the question of residences for the all-powerful knights who are 
to rule the State. 

2 The two opposite evils. Cf. 421 d. 

3 The illustration from dogs further pursued. The dog, without his 
gentle qualities and tendency to attachment, 376, becomes like a wolf. 
Here is an incident which must have been in Plato's mind, told us by 
Xenophon about the real Socrates. In 404 15. C. (when Plato was about 25) 
the cruel and covetous oligarchy of "the thirty" was ruining Athens by 
proscription and confiscation. Socrates at that time took occasion to 
observe in conversation that it was a strange thing if one thought a man 
a bad shepherd who made his sheep fewer and poorer, and did not think it 
a bad government which made the citizens fewer and poorer. The "thirty" 
sent for Socrates and told him not to talk about shepherds. 



Book III. 135 

Horrible, he said, beyond question. 

Then must we not take every precaution that our auxiliaries b 
may do nothing of the kind to the citizens, as they are stronger 
than these, becoming like savage masters instead of kindly 
allies. 

We must, he replied. 

Then will they not have been prepared with the very 
greatest of circumspection if they have been in reality well- 
educated ? 

That they have been, he said. 

And I answered, That is not fitting for us to affirm so 
absolutely 1 , my friend ; but it is fitting to affirm what we were 
saying just now, that they must have the right education, what- c 
ever it is, if they are to have what is most important to make 
them gentle to one another and to those whom they guard. 

Yes, and it is true. 

Now in addition to this education any reasonable man 
would say that we ought to provide their houses and the rest 
of their belongings 2 of such a kind as neither to interfere with 
the guardians being the best of men themselves, nor to uplift 
them into doing evil to the rest of the citizens. 

And he would say true. 

See then, I continued, whether they ought to live and dwell d 
in some such way as this, if they are to be what we desire ; 
first, none of them possessing any property of his own, except 
what is absolutely necessary 3 ; then, none of them to have any 
house or store chamber 4 into which all cannot enter when they 

1 Leading up to the second education of Book VII. 

2 The word usually = " property." But they are hardly to have property 
in the ordinary sense of the term. 

3 Referring, I suppose, to clothes, armour, and the like. 

4 In describing the degeneration from the ideal state to the military 
aristocracy (of the Spartan type), 548 A, "They will be money-lovers, like 
people in oligarchies (plutocracies), fiercely coveting gold and silver in the 
dark, because possessed of store-chambers and private treasuries where they 
can hide them, and walled residences, downright private nests," etc. 



1 36 The Republic of Plato. 

please ; and their provisions, all that men need who are experts 
e in warfare, temperate and brave, they are to receive on a settled 
estimate from the rest of the citizens as the wages of their 
guardianship, to such an amount that in every year there shall 
be neither surplus nor deficit 1 ; and to live in common like 
men in camp, having their meals together 2 ; and for gold and 
silver, we must tell them that they have these always in their 
souls, divine and god-given, and have no need of what men 
call such beside ; and it is a sin to pollute that possession by 
mingling it with the ownership of mortal gold, because much 
417 a that is unholy has been done with the coinage of this world, 
while the gold of their souls is untainted ; but for them alone, 
of all that are in the city 3 , it is not allowable to handle gold and 
silver, nor to go under the same roof with it, nor to wear 
ornaments of it, nor to drink out of silver or gold. And so 
they would be safe and would save their city ; but when they 
shall acquire land of their own and houses and coined money, 
then they will be estate managers and husbandmen instead of 
e guardians, and will turn into hostile masters of the other 
citizens in place of allies, and will pass their whole life long in 

1 Perhaps the earliest definite suggestion of the "no-margin theory" 
which has so often seemed to social reformers to cut the knot of economic 
difficulties. "Just enough" is easily said. 

2 The syssitia or common meals were a feature of the Spartan quasi - 
military organisation of the State. At Sparta the households existed as 
centres of private expenditure besides the tables which the men attended, 
much as tutors at Oxford and Cambridge may have their private houses 
independent of the college high tables. Plato means to put a stop to all 
that. 

3 It is to be noted that the guardians' way of life is to be exceptional in 
the city. Money, and probably a wider licence of self-indulgence, is per- 
mitted to the other classes — the commercial and industrial society — as we 
may perhaps say, because of the hardness of their hearts, or the roughness 
of their duties. Yet the life of the guardians, though exceptional, no doubt 
stands for the life which Plato believes to be the best. Whether he is right 
or wrong, we shall note how absolutely opposed his view is to the ordinary 
associations of aristocracy. 



Book III. 137 

hating and being hated, in plotting and being plotted against, 
fearing the enemy within much oftener and much more than 
that without 1 , and by that time running most near to destruction, 
both themselves and the entire community. Now for all these 
reasons, I ended, shall we say that the guardians ought to be 
thus appointed as to their dwellings and all else, and shall we 
enact this as a law or not ? 
Certainly, said Glaucon. 

1 Anticipates the description of the tyrant, 567 B and c. 



•38 



BOOK IV. 



Book IV. is occupied as far as 42 7 c with pointing out 
different respects in which the moral and intellectual unity of the 
commonwealth — the fact that it is "a whole^ — makes itself 
appare?it, a unity resting ultimately on the " mttsic," or character 
engrained by education, which one set of guardians hands on to 
the next. From 427 c to the end it points out the specific moral 
qualities or cardinal virtues which were most important to a 
Greek, as revealed (a) in the structure and functions of the com- 
monwealth {i.e. in the behaviour of individuals in their civic and 
industrial relations) and (b) in the heart and mind of the indi- 
viduals themselves, as filled and guided by their functions in the 
co7nmonwealth. 

Argument. 419 — 421c. The two meanings of happiness — 
the pleasures of individuals v. the welfare of the whole ; which is 
of course the individuals at their best. 

And Adeimantus broke in, Socrates, how will you defend 
yourself if any one says that you are not making these men 
particularly happy, and that of their own act ; seeing that the 
city in truth belongs to them, and yet they have no benefit of any 
of its advantages like others, viz. possessing estates and build- 
ing fine large houses and acquiring establishments suitable to 
them, and sacrificing private sacrifices to the gods 1 , and having 

1 I.e. killing an ox or a sheep, which would be the occasion of a dinner- 
party, so that this and the next clause hang together. 



Book IV. 139 

their friends to dine, and indeed what you yourself referred to 
just now, possessing gold and silver, and all that people usually 
have who are to count as at the height of bliss. But, he might 
say, they appear to be absolutely posted in the city like hired 
auxiliaries, simply on garrison duty. 

Yes 1 , I said, and moreover having only their board, and not 420 a 
even getting wages in addition to their rations like all other 
mercenaries, so that it will not even be possible for them to go 
abroad if they wish to, on their private account, nor to make 
presents to mistresses nor to spend money on anything else 
they may desire to, after the fashion of people who are sup- 
posed to be happy. You are leaving out of your accusation all 
this and more like it. 

Well, he said, consider it all to be included. 

And what is our defence to be, you ask ? b 

Yes. 

If we continue on the same path, I fancy we shall discover 
what to say. For we shall say, that to begin with, it would be 
no wonder if these very men as they are 2 had the greatest 
possible happiness ; but that nevertheless we are not constitut- 
ing our city with a view to this, that we should make any one 
group superlatively happy, but that as far as possible the city 
should be so as a whole 3 . For we thought that in such a city 



1 Socrates' irony, in accepting and intensifying the objection, shows that 
his answer to it will be one of principle and not of extenuation. 

2 I.e. on the terms proposed. 

3 This contrast between the "one group" and the "whole "at once 
reminds us of the modern principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number. It is well to recall this principle in reading the present passage, 
in order to observe how wholly different it is from what Plato has in mind. 
If Plato's contrast was really between the happiness or pleasure of a small 
number, and the similar pleasure or happiness of a larger number, Aristotle's 
objection, which we also naturally make, would be unanswerable. " If the 
guardians are not happy, surely none of the others are. And how can the 
whole be happy, if none of the members are?" Plato is really contrasting 



140 The Republic of Plato. 

we should find the highest degree of justice, and injustice 
c in one badly constituted l ; and that having seen both, we 
should be able to decide the question which has so long 
been before us. So now, as we believe, we are fashioning 
the happy commonwealth, not cutting off a part, and making 
a few people in it happy, but as a whole; and presently 
we will examine its opposite. Therefore, just as, if we were 
painting statues 2 , and some one came up and censured us for 
not putting the most beautiful pigments on the most beautiful 
parts of the figures, for the eyes, which are the most beautiful 
part, were not painted with crimson, but with black; we should 
d have thought to make a reasonable defence against him if we 
said, My good Sir, you must not suppose that we ought to 
paint such beautiful eyes as not to look like eyes at all 3 , or the 
other parts in the same way, but you should see whether, by 
assigning to every part what is appropriate to it, we make the 
whole 4 beautiful ; so too in the present case you must not 

two different senses of the term happiness, corresponding to two different 
ways in which individuals may try to satisfy their nature. 

1 See Bk. IX. for the examination of injustice in the degraded forms of 
state. 

2 It is interesting to learn definitely from this passage that it seemed 
natural to a Greek of Plato's time that statues should be painted. The 
famous sarcophagi from Sidon are said to show with what excellent effect 
this was done ; modern attempts have as a rule been most unsuccessful. The 
terra-cotta statuettes from Tanagra are prettily coloured. 

3 These words contain the whole argument in this passage and the whole 
principle of the Republic. The first thing is to be what you are, what your 
place in the whole demands. What interferes with this, however fascinating, 
is of evil. There can be no beauty nor goodness nor truth if parts are not 
in harmony with the whole. 

4 We see what is meant by a work of art being beautiful as a whole ; 
but what is meant by a State or society being happy as a whole ? It must 
be understood that the paradox conveyed by this comparison is precisely 
what Plato means to insist upon. It is happy "as a whole," we might say, 
when individuals are at their best in and through their membership of it. 
Note that there is nothing specially "aesthetic" in the comparison, which 
merely takes the work of art as an example of unity. 



Book IV. 141 

force us to attach to the guardians a kind of happiness which 
will make them anything rather than guardians. For we could 
very well, for example, take the farm labourers and clothe them 
in long robes and give them golden ornaments, telling them to e 
till the land as much as they please; or set the potters on 
couches by the fire, drinking round and round and enjoying 
themselves, with their wheel beside them, and order them to 
make pots as much as they feel inclined ; and to make all the 
rest 1 prosperous in similar fashion, that the whole city may be 
happy 2 ; but you must not give such advice to us; since, if we 
do as you tell us, neither the husbandman will be a husband- 421 a 
man nor the potter a potter ; nor will any other possess any 
such fashion of life as goes to make up a society. Now the 
rest are of less account ; for if the cordwainers become bad and 
go to ruin and pretend to be cordwainers when they are not, it 
is no danger to the State ; but if guardians of the laws and the 
commonwealth are not so but only seem, you see that they 
bring utter ruin on the entire society ; and they again alone 
command the chances of good organisation and happiness. 
Now if our plan is to make guardians in very truth, far removed b 
from being evil-doers to society, but he who takes the other 
view treats them as a sort of landed class 3 or happy revellers 
at a public festival, not members of a State, he must be speak- 
ing of something other than a city. We must then examine, 

1 Plato does not put his case on the ground that it is impossible for all 
to be "happy" in this sense, but that granting the possibility (which he 
assumes — some extraordinary bounty of nature might partly realise the 
assumption) it is the destruction of the ethical organism by the non- 
recognition of definite duties. 

2 Happy as if in inverted commas "what the objector would call 
happy." 

3 Note how thoroughly Plato applies the principle of noblesse oblige. 
To modern ideas he may seem in the passage just above to restrict the 
workman to a hard life (cf. too 421 D) ; but at least he is far from maintain- 
ing, what really gives this restriction its sting, that the upper and governing 
class ought in the nature of things to have an easy life. 



142 The Republic of Plato. 

whether we are instituting the guardians with a view to engen- 
dering the greatest happiness in them; or whether as far as 
happiness goes we are to look at the entire community to see 
if it grows up there ; while these auxiliaries and guardians are 
c to be persuaded and compelled to act so that they will be the 
best possible artificers of the work 1 which is their own, and all 
the others in the same way ; and thus, as the whole society 
prospers and is nobly organised, we must leave each of its 
groups to what their nature 2 assigns them in the way of parti- 
cipation in happiness. 

Argument. 421c — 423 B. In all classes, not merely the 
guardians, wealth and poverty are fatal to function. The 
stre?igth of the social whole is its unity, which does not depend on 
wealth. 

Why, he said, I think you are right. 

Then shall you think me reasonable when I say what 
come next to this? 

What in particular ? 

About the rest of the workers 3 in their turn, consider if the 
influences I shall speak of corrupt them, so that they become 
worthless. 
d What are they ? 

1 Their work is the liberty, or development of faculty, of all members 
of the community, cf. 395c, "consummate artificers of liberty for the 
commonwealth." 

2 "Their nature" or "nature"; there is no difference. The society 
for Plato simply is the outgrowth of man's natural endowments in their 
completest form, or in other words, the maturity of man's endowments in 
their completest form is the nature of society, asserting itself in an 
intelligent and therefore social being. For the full bearing of the refer- 
ence to what man's nature permits in the way of happiness see Bk. IX. 
586 E and 587. 

3 The guardians have been dealt with in this respect; he goes on to the 
other " public workers," i.e. the artisans, etc. 



Book IV. 143 

Wealth, I said, and poverty. 

In what way ? 

In this way ; do you think that a potter when he has got 
rich, will go on attending to his art ? 

By no means, he said. 

But he will become more idle and careless than he was ? 

Yes, greatly so. 

Then he will be a worse potter ? 

A great deal worse. 

And again if poverty prevents him from getting the proper 
instruments, or anything else necessary to his art, he will make e 
his products inferior, and make worse workmen of his sons or 
others whom he may teach. 

Undoubtedly. 

From both of these then, poverty and wealth, the products 
of art grow worse, and so do the artificers. 

It appears so. 

We have found then as it seems, another 1 task for the 
guardians, something which they must watch against by every 
means, lest it should slip into the city behind their backs. 

What is this ? 

Wealth, I said, and poverty; as the former produces luxury 422 a 
and idleness and revolution 3 , and the latter meanness and evil- 
doing in addition to a revolutionary spirit. 

1 ' Besides keeping themselves clear of property, money, etc. 

2 This seems strange to us, who think wealth on the whole "conserva- 
tive." But in the Greek states it was not uncommon for the wealthy party, 
being or supposing themselves threatened, to adopt violent measures. Any- 
thing that gave individuals a preeminent position was apt to be "suspect" 
to a Greek, and not without reason. There is a quaint expression in 
Herodotus about a man who " grew his hair long with a view to tyranny," 
i.e. became peculiar and pretentious in his way of life. The Athenians felt 
this about Alcibiades, and of course the idea that great wealth sets one 
above the law is not unknown in the modern world. In 552 B Plato draws 
out the view here implied, that the useless rich and the helpless pauper are 
really of the same social type. 



144 The Republic of Plato. 

Just so, he said. But consider then, Socrates, how our 
city will be able to go to war, when it possesses no money, 
especially if it is compelled to fight with one which is great and 
wealthy. 

Obviously, I replied, it would be harder to fight one, but 
easier to deal with two of that type. 
b What do you say? 

In the first place, I said, if they have to fight, will it not be 
with wealthy men, while themselves are experts 1 in war? 

Yes, that much is true, he said. 

Well then, Adeimantus, I said ; do you not think that one 
prize-fighter, in the best possible state of preparation, could 
easily fight with two men, who were not boxers, and were rich 
and stout? 

Perhaps not with two at once, he said. 

Not even if he were allowed to run away for a little, and 
c then turn back 2 and hit the first who came up with him, and 
were to do this time after time in the sun and the heat? 
Could not a man like that defeat many men like the others ? 

Well, he replied, it would be nothing wonderful. 

But do you not think that the rich have more to do with 
boxing in the way of skill and experience than with war ? 

I do. 

Then our experts in all likelihood will fight with double or 
treble their own number ? 

I shall assent to your view, he said, for you seem to me to 

say right. 

D And what if they were to send an embassy to one of the two 

cities saying, what would be quite true, " We make no use of 

gold or silver coin 3 , nor is it lawful for us, but it is for you; so 

1 Greek "athletes," which originally means "competitors" or "prize 
winners " ; i.e. people specially trained for a special purpose. 

2 A trick of the Spartans in actual war, which Plato may have in mind, 
as they passed in Greece for military experts par excellence. 

3 See 419 E and note. 



Book IV. 145 

you had better take our side in the war and possess the belong- 
ings of the other city." Do you suppose that any body of 
men after hearing such an offer would choose to go to war 
against hardy and lean dogs, rather than to join the dogs 
against soft and delicate sheep ? 

I do not think so. But, he went on, if the wealth of the 
one city is gathered into the other, take care lest it bring e 
danger to the city which is not wealthy 1 . 

You are in a fool's paradise, I said, if you think that the 
name of city applies to any but such an one as we were 
establishing. 

Why, how is that ? he said. 

You must find a larger name for all others; for each of 
them is a number of cities, but not one city, as they say in the 
game 2 . For if it be anything at all it is two cities, hostile to 
one another, the one of the poor, the other of the rich ; and 423 a 
each of these contains several, which if you deal with as a 
single one, you will entirely miss your aim, but if as many, 
offering the wealth and resources of the one group to the other, 
or even their persons 3 , you will always have many allies and 

1 Adeimantus displays an obstinacy on this point quite exceptional in 
an interlocutor in the Republic. Plato seems thus to recognise the strong 
conviction which had arisen a generation or two previously that wealth is 
"the sinews of war." Thucydides, for example, gives arguments in its 
favour, and the event of the struggle between Athens and Sparta could not 
be held to be really contrary to such a view, considering what a part was 
played by subsidies from Persia in the close of that struggle. Socrates 
therefore argues all the more strenuously against it. Perhaps Switzerland 
is a case in his favour. 

2 The allusion is not clear. There was a game like draughts in which 
the two sides of the board were called "cities" (poleis). 

3 I.e. as slaves. Plato expresses his views on a reform of the laws of 
war, 470—1 ; and we must not suppose that he seriously advises the pro- 
clamation of plunder and enslavement as a means of setting class against 
class in a hostile State. He is merely accenting the point, which it is 
wonderful that he saw so clearly in the small communities of his day, that 
a State is a tissue of groups within groups and bodies within bodies, and is 

B. IO 



146 The Republic of Plato, 

few enemies. And as long as your city maintains a sane 1 
organisation such as was ordained but now, it will be the 
greatest, I do not say in prestige, but in real truth the greatest, 
even if it have only a thousand defenders ; for so large a single 
city you will not easily find either among the Greeks or among 
B foreigners, though you will find many that appear to be many 
times its size. Or do you think otherwise ? 
No, by Zeus, he said. 

423 b — 424 . The area of a State to be that compatible with 
unity. The basis of unity. 

Then, I continued, this will be both the best limit which 
our rulers can adopt in determining the right magnitude 2 of the 
State, and a rule for the amount of territory which they must 
appropriate for a State of any given size 3 ; and they must let 
alone all beyond. 

What limit ? he said. 

This, I imagine, I answered. They must enlarge it to the 
point up to which it can grow and yet be one, but not beyond 4 . 
c Yes, you are right. 

powerless for external action if these elements fall into conflict beyond a 
certain point. 

1 Lit. " temperate," i.e. based on a harmonious frame of mind in which 
the true ends of life have their proper place. 

- I.e. in population, as the context shows. 

;: Viz. in population. 

4 Perhaps I may cite a modern equivalent for this principle from my 
Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 185. "A principle, so to speak, of 
political parsimony — entia non stint multiplicanda praeter necessitate?)!, 
'two organisations will not survive when one can do the work,' — is 
always tending to expand the political unit. The limits of the common 
experience necessary for effective self-government are always operating 
to control this expansion. We might therefore suggest, as a principle 
determining the area of States, 'the widest territorial area compatible 
with the unity of experience which is demanded by effective self-govern- 
ment.' " 



Book IV. 147 

Then shall we not lay upon the guardians this further 
injunction, to ensure in every possible way that the city shall 
neither be small nor have the appearance of being large *, but 
be such as to be sufficient, and one. 

Yes; no doubt it is a simple 2 injunction to lay upon them. 

And here is one still simpler, I said, which we alluded to 
previously 3 , when we urged that if an inferior offspring was 
born of the guardians, he should be sent away among the 
others, and if a noble one came of the others, he was to be 
transferred to the guardians. Now this meant 4 to declare that d 
they have a duty, extending to all the citizens, to bring every 
one to that one particular work for which his nature fits him 5 , 
in order that each practising one work, his own, may be not 
many people, but one, and so the whole city may grow to be 
one, not many 6 . 

1 It is implied that if a city strikes us as especially " small " or " large " 
we must really mean that it is too small or too large for its proper work. 
If it was just right, thoroughly organised and " sufficient," it would not or 
need not strike us as small or large. Actual size, Plato is contending, has 
nothing to do with the point; the question is one of size in relation 
to unity. 

2 Ironical. 

3 415 B and c. 

4 An interpretation of Plato by himself, most valuable as a guide to us 
in interpreting. 

5 Or lit. "for which he is born." Note the enormous difference between 
the phrases '■'■for which he is born" and "to which he is born." The Greek 
notion of Nature as working for an end is decisive for the former through- 
out Greek thought. 

6 The city is "one" if the occupations of its members, though all 
different from each other, are such as to form a co-operative system. It is 
"many," in as far as men, while in one capacity, say as professional men, 
doing definite service to the community, are in another, say as careless 
givers of charity, supporting a state of mind and of things inconsistent with 
the aims of a sound commonwealth. Then the State has inside it a 
secondary system like a cancer or tumour, involving the activity of some 
of its members in a way inconsistent with healthy life. Plato does not 
mean to say a man cannot do more than one thing. Plurality is constantly 

10 — 2 



148 The Republic of Plato. 

Yes, he said, this is still easier than the former. 

My dear Adeimantus, these are not, as a man might think, 
many and serious tasks which we shall present to them, but all 
e of them are trivial 1 , if they secure the one great thing, as men 
say, or rather, not great * but sufficing. 

What is that ? he asked. 

The education and nurture, I replied. For if they are well- 
educated and become reasonable men, they will easily see the 
right in all these matters, and in others too, all that we are 
now omitting, the possession of wives, and the arrangement of 
wedlock and of the begetting of children, to the effect that all 
424 a this ought as far as possible to be treated ' in common as 
friends' belongings 3 ,' according to the proverb. 

Yes, he said, that would be by far the best way. 

And indeed, I went on, the system of a State, if it is once 
started right, goes on with accumulating speed like a wheel 4 . 



his way of expressing discord, because when there is no discord plurality is 
a form of unity. 

1 The irony is thrown off, as the latent ardour breaks out. 

2 He regards the word "great," in the spirit of 423c. It is irrelevant 
whether the work looks huge or tiny, costly or cheap (as a modern might 
say) ; the point is that it should be right, adapted to its end as grasped by 
the intelligence. 

3 This observation anticipates the communism, or abolition of the 
permanent family, which is fully discussed in Book V. In the casual air 
with which this tremendous innovation is introduced, we have Plato's 
customary mingling of irony and overwhelming conviction. 

4 The suggestion of continued progress which this comparison implies 
is said to be seldom found in Greek writers. We ought perhaps to compare 
Greek ideas on this point rather with our own anticipation of the future 
than with our knowledge of historical events which could not be known to 
them. What we mean by progress is for the most part with certain reserves 
an intensification of the state of things in which we find ourselves, and it 
would be hard to show that the Greeks had no such expectation. They 
certainly did not anticipate anything like the Roman empire or Christianity, 
but arc we able to conceive anything which should stand to us as these stood 
trt ancient Greece ? 



Book IV. 149 

For good nurture and education, being kept up, produce good 
natures, and again good natures, supported by such an educa- 
tion, grow up even better than their predecessors 1 , more 
especially in the begetting of offspring, as with other animals. 
In all probability. b 

Then, to put it in brief, there is one precaution to which 
the authorities of the city must hold fast, that it may not break 
down unnoticed, but they may observe it on every occasion, that 
is, to have no innovation in gymnastic and music contrary to 
the ordinance, but to guard it with the greatest possible care ; 
in fear lest when a poet says that men care most for the newest 
song they sing 2 , it may perhaps be thought that the poet means 
not new compositions but a new fashion of song music, and 
approves of it. But we must not approve of it, nor understand c 
him so. For we must beware of a change to a new type of 
music as risking everything; since the fashions of music are 
never changed without change of the greatest civic laws 3 , as 
Damon alleges and I agree. 

You may set me down too as agreeing, said Adeimantus. 

1 A singularly modern passage, though as expressed "Lamarckian" 
rather than purely "Darwinian." In any case it would seem that there is 
a tendency for the pupil to outstrip the teacher, even in purely physical 
activities, whatever the reason may be. 

2 Homer, Odyssey 1. 35 t, apparently quoted from memory. 

3 The word which means laws also means strains of music. And 
further, in meaning "laws" it is not restricted to statutes as contrasted 
with what we should call constitutional usage, or social, sentiment and 
tradition, but includes all of these. A great Greek historian attributes to a 
great Greek statesman the view that the unwritten laws, whose sanction is 
the stigma of public opinion, are the strongest. The remark so often quoted 
as a parallel to this passage comes from Fletcher of Saltoun (1653 — I 7 I &)' 
" I said I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment 
that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need 
not care who should make the laws of a nation." Obviously this might 
mean that statute laws are of no effect compared to popular sentiment, 
which is connected with Plato's contention, but is very different from it. 
The question raised is a very large one — the connection of changes in art 



150 The Republic of Plato. 

Argument. 424 d — 427 c The unity of the city, then (on 
which, according to the three preceding sections, its happiness, 
strength, and proper size depend) is a spiritual or ethical unity, 
and if this is maintained, all else ivill settle itself; and if not, all 
reforms of detail are like medicines to an intemperate man. 

d It 1 is here, then, in music, that the guardians must build 
their fort 2 ? 

Certainly, he answered; lawlessness in this sphere easily 
creeps in unobserved. 

Yes, I said, as if in play and doing no harm. 

Nor does it, he replied, unless this is harm — immigrating 

and letters with changes in the life of peoples, and -whether as causes or as 
symptoms. Ruskin and William Morris have written about little else than 
this, and in music proper we may think of the general change of sentiment 
implied in the popularity of Wagner. Of course Plato sees the point 
very simply and directly. But his view contains the essence of the 
matter. 

1 It would be less easy than might seem to "place" Plato with reference 
to modern political tendencies. He has a profound contempt both for 
elaborate or paternal legislative regulations, and for timidity in fundamental 
reform (see 426 B and c). If you say that he is a conservative you are met 
by the fact that revolutionary changes are just what he does not shrink from. 
If you try him as an advanced liberal, you are faced by his absolute con- 
tempt for reform by progressive legislation, and, to take him at his word, 
for the achievements of an imperial democracy very like our own. The only 
right course is to learn his great ideas sympathetically, and trust our own 
sense for their application. 

2 An intentional modification of 415 e. The city, as we have said 
before, is the city of Mansoul, and the fort or watch tower is not an 
Acropolis such as many Greek cities possessed, but vigilance in maintaining 
a harmonious and loyal spirit, or as we might say, a civic religion. " We 
wrestle not with flesh and blood — but with spiritual wickedness in high 
places." Note that the Greek word here used for fort or safeguard is the 
original of the word "phylactery" known to us in the New Testament. 
I do not know whether this Greek name for a Jewish habit could possibly 
have any connection with Plato's ideas ; but in any case it is interesting to 
observe the analogous symbolism in the two cases. 



Book IV. 151 

little by little it quietly permeates both character and conduct; 
and from these it comes out in greater force into men's deal- 
ings with one another, and from their dealings it proceeds to 
attack the laws and polities, with licentiousness, Socrates, of 
great violence, until at the end it overturns all, both in the e 
private and the public world. 

Well, I said, is this so? 

I think so, he answered. 

Then as we maintained from the beginning, our children 
must participate in a more law-abiding kind of play 1 from 
childhood up, since if it comes to be lawless and the children 
resemble it, it is impossible that they should grow up to be 425 a 
loyal and noble men 2 . 

Unquestionably. 

So when children have begun by learning to play prettily 3 
and have taken in lawfulness from their "music 4 ," then again, 
in the contrary way to those others, it accompanies them into 
everything and prospers it, building up again any part of the 
State that may have been in decay. 

1 Play, including children's games, and also the amusement of having 
stories told them, and telling them, and all their make-believes, which are 
the beginning of Music. 

2 The modern reader thinks of e.g. the remark made to Lord Lawrence 
by his old teacher, " But, I say, what has become of all our good boys?", 
and wonders if Plato allows enough for spontaneity and reaction. Some 
kinds of insubordination however are the other side of loyalty, and esprit de 
corps has many forms. The effect of a bad home seems to show that boys 
have no chance if they have not somehow or somewhere met with a good 
tradition of conduct, and this is what Plato is asserting. Just as we hardly 
remember having been taught to spell, so we are hardly aware of the 
amount of positive ethical training which we have gone through in child- 
hood and boyhood — to play fair and with good temper, to suppress tricks 
and negligences annoying to other people, etc., etc. We have never reflected 
what we should have been like but for this training. "Just because things 
are familiar they are not known. " 

3 I.e. in a pleasant and "loyal" temper. 

4 Cf. 404 D. 



152 The Republic of Plato. 

That is certainly true. 

And they rediscover the minor moralities, as they are called, 
which former generations had entirely lost. 

Of what kind ? 

Such as these ; the proper habits of silence in the young 

e before their elders, and offering them a seat, and standing up 

when they enter, and respect for parents, and hair-cutting and 

dress and shoes, and in general the personal appearance and 

everything of that kind. Or do you not think so ? 

I do. 

But I think it foolish to legislate about them ; for they do 
not come about, and could not be maintained, by enactment in 
written clauses. 

How should they ? 
c It is probable, at any rate, Adeimantus, I said, that the 
sequel of a man's education is such as the direction it 
impresses upon him. Or is it not always so that like calls out 
like? 

Certainly. 

And we should say, I imagine, that in the end it results in 
something complete and vigorous whether good or the 
opposite. 

No doubt. 

Then I, I continued, for this reason, should not attempt to 
extend legislation to such maters. 

Quite reasonably. 
Tj And for heaven's sake, I said, what are we to do about 
market laws, dealing with the covenants between individuals in 
the market-place, and if you like with contracts for industrial 
work, and with slander and assault ; and again about the initia- 
tion of lawsuits and appointment of juries 1 , and any collection 
or assessment of dues which may be necessary in markets or 
harbours, or in general the regulations of the market, the city, 

1 Or "judges"; the Athenian "dicast" was both or neither. 



Book IV. 153 

or the harbour 1 , or anything else of the kind — shall we bring 
ourselves to enact any of them by law ? 

Why, he said, it is not fitting matter for injunctions upon 
good and honourable men ; they will easily devise for the most 
part any legislation that is needed. 

Yes, my friend, I said; if God grants them safekeeping 2 of E 
the laws which we described before. 

And if not, he replied, they will spend their lives perpetually 
enacting and amending things of the kind, expecting some day 
to hit upon the very best. 

You mean that such men will live like invalids whose 
intemperance makes them refuse to depart from their unwhole- 
some mode of life 3 . 

Exactly so. 426 A 

And how charmingly these spend their days. For they 
gain nothing by continual treatment except to make their 
ailments more varied and more intense, hoping all the time 
that every new remedy which is suggested will at last make 
them well. 

Precisely, he said ; that is the experience of invalids of that 
type. 

And further, is not this a graceful feature in them, that they 
think their greatest enemy to be any one who tells them the 
truth, that unless they stop drinking and stuffing and indulging 
their lust, and idling, neither drugs nor cauteries nor the knife, b 
nor again spells nor amulets nor anything else of the kind will 
do them any good ? 

Not altogether graceful, he said; for there is no grace in 
being angry with one who speaks the truth. 

1 All these regulations and rates or taxes were very important and 
elaborate at Athens. 

2 Note recurrence of this word, 429 C As Plato expands his idea of 
human nature, e.g. in Books VI. and VII., we hear less of "safe-keeping" 
and more of the craving for the completest truth and goodness. 

3 Cf. 405 ff. ; the comparison with valetudinarianism is now applied to 
the body politic as before to the conduct of the individual. 



1 54 The Republic of Plato. 

You do not seem to applaud such persons, I said. 

By Zeus ! no. 

Then if the whole State acts in this way, as we were saying 
but now, you will not applaud it. Or do you not think that 
all States are acting in the same way with them, which having 
c a faulty constitution ! proclaim to the citizens not to touch the 
fabric of the State as a whole, under penalty of death for who- 
ever does so ; but any one who will minister to them most 
pleasantly, while retaining their constitution, and will make 
himself agreeable to them by fawning on them and foreseeing 
their wishes, and who is skilful in accomplishing these, he in 
their view will be a good man, possessed of the highest wisdom. 
and will be honoured by them ? 

I think they are acting in the same way, and I do not at all 
approve. 
D And what of those who consent and are eager to be the 
ministers 2 of such States? Do you not admire them for their 
courage and versatility ? 

Yes, I do ; except those who have been deluded by their 
communities, and suppose themselves to be statesmen in 
reality, because they are applauded by the crowd. 

What are you saying? Have you no sympathy for the 
men ? Do you think it possible for a man who does not know- 
how to measure, when a number of others who are in the same 
E case keep telling him that he is six feet high, not himself to 
believe it of himself? 

No, not in that instance, he answered. 

Then do not be angry ; for surely too these are the most 
delightful of all, as they keep legislating and amending the sort 
of things we enumerated but now 3 , constantly supposing that 

1 " Constitution," not in the somewhat special sense of modern politics, 
but the whole way in which the social fabric is constituted and behaves, 
certainly including its economic system. 

- Including the idea of " being medical attendant of." 

:i 4^5 D. 



Book IV. 155 

they will put an end to frauds in commercial transactions 1 and 
to all the evils I referred to just now, not knowing that in fact 
they are, as it were, cutting off a hydra's heads 2 . 

Yes, indeed, that is just what they are doing. 427 a 

So then, I said, I should not have thought that the true 
legislator 3 ought to busy himself in this kind with laws or polity 
either in a State where the civic life is bad, or in one where it 
is good ; in the former because it would be useless and nothing 
gained, in the latter because part of it any one could contrive 4 , 
part will follow spontaneously from the practices before laid 
down 5 . 

Then what more have we to do in our legislations? he b 
asked. 

And I replied, We have nothing more ; but for Apollo and 
Delphi there remain the gravest and most beautiful and highest 
of the enactments. 

Of what kind ? 



1 Cf. our bankruptcy laws, of which it is said that the method of 
evading each new Act is discovered in a definite number of years after the 
Act is passed. No doubt Plato is hampered by the Greek idea of a " law- 
giver" as a heroic figure — Lycurgus or Solon — at the beginning of history, 
and does not regard legislation as a perpetual social function. 

2 The point is that the hydra's heads grew again as often as Herakles 
cut them off. We sometimes say "hydra-headed" as if it merely meant 
many-headed. 

3 See note before last. 

4 See 425 D. This is what does require legislation, but need not be 
incorporated in the fundamental code ; matters for bye-laws, as we might 
say. Of course this so far forms a meeting point between our feeling and 
Plato's, viz. he admits that certain minor points need authoritative regula- 
tion from time to time, only this seems to him a different thing from the 
main principles of the civic life — the constitution, so to speak. We might 
illustrate his meaning by the relation of the central departments to local 
authorities, in leaving the latter free to regulate local matters according 
to local needs within limits, but not to upset the main principles of 
administration. 

5 I.e. is not matter for legislation at all. 



1 56 The Republic of Plato. 

The establishment of temples, and sacrifices, and other 
forms of worship of gods and demigods and heroes, and the 
sepulture of the dead, and all the services by rendering which 
to those elsewhere 1 we ought to retain their good-will. For in 
matters of this kind, as we do not ourselves understand them, 
so in founding our city we shall obey no other than our 
ancestral interpreter 2 ; for this god surely as the ancestral inter- 
preter of such matters to all mankind, interprets, sitting in the 
navel in the centre of the earth 3 . 

You say right, he answered ; and we must act accordingly. 

The 4 foundation of your State, O son of Ariston, may now 

1 The dead. 

2 As the Pythia, the woman who uttered the oracle, was the forthteller 
or mouthpiece (prophet) of Apollo, so Apollo himself was the declarer or 
utterer, here rendered interpreter, of the divine will. "Ancestral," i.e. 
relied on by the Greek nation from the beginning. There is a curious 
reticence, almost amounting to irony ("we do not ourselves understand"), 
combined with a real seriousness in this passage. Religion was to be the 
culmination of the national life; not a detached object of individual fancy. 
In the Laws Plato would not allow private persons to establish temples and 
services. This is quite in harmony with the view of the historical Socrates, 
who when asked, "How should I worship God?" replied, "according to 
the law of the State." 

3 Apollo's temple at Delphi was supposed by the Greeks to stand on a 
rock or boss which was the actual centre of the earth's surface. This belief 
had an ethical bearing, for the idea of the unity of mankind can hardly be 
grasped apart from the conception of the earth's surface as a limited area 
of some kind. Moderns have remarked on the importance, in this respect, 
of our knowledge that the earth is a globe. Plato's words, " to all man- 
kind," are unmistakeable. No doubt he would be thinking first and chiefly 
of the Greeks; they inhabited very various regions, Gaul, Africa, Italy, 
Asia, Thrace, Russia, Cyprus, and were thought of as representative types 
of the human race making up the civilised world. But foreign princes, as 
we know, often consulted the Delphic oracle ; and there is no reason to 
doubt that Plato's solemn language was meant to recognise a common 
spiritual centre for mankind as such. The oracle of course answered with 
reference to the tradition and descent of the State it was addressing; it made 
no attempt at introducing religious uniformity. 

4 See note on 419. Here we pass to the second part of Book IV. 



Book IV. 157 

be considered complete ; and the next thing is that you should 
bring a sufficient light from somewhere and look about in it 
yourself, and ask your brother to help you and Polemarchus 
and the rest, that we may see if possible wherever justice can 
be, and where injustice, and in what the two differ from one 
another, and which of them a man must possess who is to be 
happy, whether known for what he is, or not, by all gods and 
men 1 . 

That will not do, said Glaucon : for you promised to make e 
the search, seeing that it was a sin for you not to come to the 
aid of justice in every way to the best of your power 2 . 

You remind me truly, I said, and no doubt I must do so ; 
but you must take part with me. 

We will do that, he answered. 

I hope, then, I said, to find it in this way. I suppose that 
our city, since its foundation has been rightly conducted, is 
wise, brave, temperate and just 3 . 

Clearly. 

Then whatever of all these we find in it, the remainder will 

which traces the four cardinal virtues as displayed first in those actions and 
relations of individuals, grouped in accordance with their civic functions, 
by which the commonwealth is constituted and maintained; and secondly 
the same virtues or excellencies as qualities in the heart or mind of individual 
citizens, of which inward qualities the constitution and maintenance of the 
commonwealth is the outward and visible sign. The former are often called 
the virtues in the State, the latter the virtues in the individual. Plato's 
whole point is that the two are inseparable aspects of the same thing ; cf. 
435 E > 443C to e, 544 E. 

First, 427 D — 429 a, he speaks of the Wisdom of the State. 

1 Cf. 376 e and 580 c. 

2 368 c. 

3 The enumeration of these four "cardinal virtues" may be called 
arbitrary. It represents Plato's judgment as to the kinds of excellence 
which he takes to be the corner-stones of the life of civilised man, being the 
qualities which are exhibited on a large scale ("in the State") in statesman- 
ship, war, political loyalty or subordination, and a general habit of fulfilment 
of function without collision of spheres. 



158 The Republic of Plato. 

428 a be that which we have not found. So it is just as with any 
four qualities l , if we had been seeking one of them in anything, 
we should have been satisfied as soon as we recognised it ; but 
if we found the other three first, this very fact would have 
make known to us that which we sought ; for plainly it could 
now be no other than what remained 2 . 

You are right. 

Then must we not enquire about these qualities, since there 
are four of them, by the same method ? 

Clearly so. 
b And first I think that wisdom is to be seen in it ; and there 
is a paradoxical 3 look about the quality. 

How ? said he. 

The State which we described seems to me to be really 
wise ; for it is well-counselled, is it not ? 

Yes. 

And this very thing, good counsel, is plainly a sort of 
knowledge ; for surely people take good counsel not by ignor- 
ance but by knowledge. 

Obviously. 

Now there are many and various kinds of knowledge in the 
State. 

Undoubtedly. 

Then is the State to be called wise and well-counselled by 
reason of the knowledge 4 of the carpenters? 



1 The Greek has no substantive where the word "qualities" stands in 
this sentence. The necessity of inserting one to suit the English idiom 
makes the argument seem much more naive than it really is, especially if 
" things" is the word inserted. Plato thinks of the four moral excellences 
as the most notable elements of a civic society, and on this basis his argument 
is fair enough. 

2 A rather naive anticipation of the "method of Residues." It depends 
purely on the investigator's insight, even more than the modern method. 

8 See 428 E for the nature of the paradox. 

4 Any science, art, craft, or skill, may in Greek be described by this 



Book IV. 159 

By no means, he said, because of this; but only "famous c 
for woodwork." 

Then it is not by reason of the knowledge which has to do 
with wooden furniture, and by taking counsel how it may be 
best turned out, that the State is to be called wise? 

Certainly not 

Well, then, is it because of the knowledge that deals with 
things made of brass, or any knowledge of that kind ? 

It is not due to any of them. 

Nor again is the State called wise by reason of the know- 
ledge how to grow crops out of the ground ; but only "famous 
for agriculture 1 ." 

I think so. 

But now, I said, is there any knowledge, within the 
State which we have just founded, in the minds of any of its 
citizens, by which counsel is taken not on behalf of any one of d 
the elements that are in the State, but on behalf of itself as a 
whole, in what way it may best conduct itself both towards 
itself and towards all other States ? 

Certainly there is. 

What, I said, and in whom ? 

This, he answered, is the guardian knowledge, and it is in 
those rulers, whom but now we were speaking of by the name 
of perfect guardians. 

Then in virtue of this knowledge what do you call the State? 

Well-counselled, he answered, and really wise. 

Now, I asked, which do you think will be more numerous e 
in our State, the brass-workers, or these real guardians ? 

The brass-workers, he said, by a long way. 

And of the whole number of those who are given certain 



same word, which is also more specially used by Plato and Aristotle for 
science in the strict sense. 

1 Note by the way how little it occurs to a Greek that a "city" must be 
a "town." 



160 The Republic of Plato. 

class names from possessing certain kinds of knowledge 1 will 
not the guardians be the fewest ? 

By far. 

Then a State which is organised according to nature will be 
wise as a whole through the smallest group and portion of 
itself, that which is chief and rules, and through the knowledge 
429 a which is in it ; and this race, as it seems, naturally comes into 
being in the smallest number — this which has the gift of par- 
taking in the knowledge in question, of all kinds of knowledge 
the only one which should be called wisdom. 

What you say is most true. 

This one then of the four we have made shift to discover, 
both the quality itself and where in the State it is seated. 

I at any rate think, he said, that it is adequately ascer- 
tained. 

Argume?it. 429 a — 430 a. Courage as a social or civic 
quality ; not the highest kind of courage conceivable, but on the 
other hand quite distinct fro??i certain lower kinds 2 . 

Courage, again, both the quality itself and in what part 
of the city it lies, owing to which the city is to be called 
courageous, is not very hard to see. 

1 I.e. the members of the various trades and professions. Much may 
be said from a modern point of view about the need that the ruler's 
knowledge shall be in touch with the craftsman's life and ideas. But 
none of it will seriously impeach the paradox which Plato drives home 
with his whole force here and elsewhere, that actual government is neces- 
sarily in the hands of a few. This is almost as true of a trade union or a 
democracy as of an army or a monarchy. Whether the capacity for ruling 
is as he thinks a rare gift, is perhaps more doubtful. But the position in 
which it can be fully developed is necessarily confined to a few. 

2 The definite conception of courage, excluding a great deal which for 
us passes by that name, is one of the corner-stones of Greek Ethics. It is 
well worth while to compare with the present passage Aristotle's account of 
this quality in Nicomachccui Ethics (Peters' translation), Book III. ch. 6 
— 9 inclusive. 



Book IV. 161 

How SO? B 

Who would have regard, in calling a city either cowardly 
or brave, to anything but that part of it which does battle and 
goes to war on its behalf? 

No one would have regard to any other part. 

For I presume that whether the others in it are cowardly 
or brave would not determine whether the State was the one or 
the other 1 . 

No. 

Then the State will be brave, again, through a certain part 
of itself, because in that part it possesses a capacity such as to 
preserve through everything the opinion 2 concerning things to 
be feared, that they are such and such like as the lawgiver in c 
the education taught that they were. Or is not this what you 
call courage ? 

I did not quite understand 3 what you said, he answered; 
please to say it again. 

I for my part, said I, affirm that courage is a kind of safe- 
keeping. 

What kind of safe-keeping? 

That of the opinion, which the law has created by means 

1 Plato is stating broadly and decidedly the doctrine of a social organism 
which is, in each function, what the organ charged with that function makes 
it. It would be easy to suggest reservations upon Plato's statement — to 
ask, e.g. whether England is not brave in virtue of her miners and her 
commercial marine as well as in virtue of her soldiers and her war navy. 
But all of these, if they have any social importance, would ultimately fall 
under Plato's principle. 

2 Throughout the "first education" and the account of the citizen 
qualities which is its sequel we are only dealing with "opinion" — the sort 
of impression or conviction which all of us live under in matters determined 
for us by early training and moral tradition. That some minds will criticise 
this tradition is a problem dealt with at a later stage. But it is intended 
throughout that the education shall embody rational principles, so that there 
may be as little as possible to unlearn. 

3 The treatment of courage as something depending on ideas is new to 
the hearer. 

B. II 



1 62 The Republic of Plato* 

of the education, about things to be feared, which they are, 
and of what kind. And by a safe-keeping through everything 
d I meant that they preserve it in pains and in pleasures, in 
desires and in fears, and do not let it go. And if you wish, I 
will give you a simile, showing what it seems to me to be 
like. 

Of course I wish it. 

You know then that the dyers when they want to dye wool 
so as to have the true sea-purple 1 , in the first place select out 
of all the possible colours the quality 2 of white wool, and then 
prepare it for dyeing by treatment with very elaborate pro- 
cesses, that it may receive the bloom quite perfectly, and not 
till then do they dye it ; and everything that has been dyed in 
e this way has an indelible dye, and no washing either with 
detergents or without is able to take away its bloom ; but what 
is not done in this way — you know how it comes out, whether 
they dye it with other colours or even with this, omitting the 
previous treatment. 

I know, he said, it washes out most absurdly. 

Then you are to conceive that we too were doing some- 
thing like this, so far as we were able, when we were selecting 
430 a our soldiers, and training them in music and gymnastic ; you 
must suppose that we were devising nothing else than how 
with full conviction 3 our men might best take the colour of the 
laws, like a dye, in order that their opinion, both about terrors 
and about all else, might turn out indelible, because their 

1 The purple that came from a shell-fish, one of the earliest articles of 
commerce in Greek waters. It is difficult to believe that this idea of the 
"sea-purple," which the Greeks were fond of dwelling on, had no connection 
with the colour of the sea. 

- Lit. "nature." 

3 First comes the preparation, then the acceptance; cf. 401 E and 402 a. 
This assent or acceptance only amounts to coming to see the meaning of 
what you have been taught to do and feel ; it does not imply a critical 
attitude, which, as said above, is dealt with at a later stage. 



Book IV. 163 

quality ' and their nurture had been appropriate ; and that the 
detergents of the soul, however fatal in their operation, might 
never wash away their dye, whether pleasure, more tremendous 
in its efficiency than any nitre or alkali, or pain and fear and b 
desire, stronger than all other detergents. It is this faculty, a 
safe-keeping through everything of the right and lawful opinion 
with regard to what is terrible and what is not, which I name 
and set down as courage, unless you say something against it. 

No, he answered, I say nothing against it. For as regards 
that right opinion about these same matters which has come 
into being without education, that of the lower animals and of 
slaves 2 , I understand you not to consider it altogether lawful, 
and so to call it something other than courage. 

Perfectly true. 

Then I agree that courage is what you say. 

Yes, you must agree that this is citizen courage 3 , and you c 
will be right ; but we will treat of this excellence more per- 
fectly, if you like, another time. For at present it was not this 
we were looking for, but justice; so I fancy our enquiry into 
it is sufficient for the purpose. 

You say well, he answered. 

1 Lit. nature; keeping to the simile of 429 d as to selection followed by 
treatment. 

2 The citizen character is here definitely marked off from the animal 
instinct to which it was at first compared (375 — 6). A dog or servant who 
will die for his master, is guided by some kind of "opinion" ("seeming") 
or mental association; but such "courage" is not the courage of the 
citizen, because it is not founded on the idea of law and of a common 
good, imparted by society through education. We rank as courage many 
qualities which would not satisfy Plato's conception. On the other hand, 
the Greek citizen fell far short of good modern troops in constancy of 
disciplined valour. Thermopylae would be a matter of course to a modern 
regiment. 

3 Distinguished both from the uneducated impulse, just referred to, and 
from the courage of the saint or hero, the perfection of manhood, which is 
to be described when the treatise passes beyond the merely social qualities. 
See 486 a and B. 



164 The Republic of Plato. 

Argument. 430 d — 43 2 a. The quality of temperarice, not 
seated in a?iy one organ of the State, but consisting in a certain 
responsiveness to law and reaso?i which pervades every element of 
the community, and gives authority to the recognised higher self 
of the society, which may (in actual States) be an embodiment of 
very diffe7-ent principles (432 a). 

d There still remain two qualities, I continued, which we 
have to discern in the State; temperance, and that for the sake 
of which we are pursuing the whole enquiry, namely justice. 
In what way then shall we discover justice — to pass over the 
discussion of temperance ? 

I do not know, he said, and I do not care for justice to be 
first brought to light, if we are not to go on to consider tem- 
perance ; but if you are willing to do me a favour, scrutinise 
the latter before you treat of justice. 

Why surely, I said, I should like to, if I am not doing 
wrong. 
e Make the scrutiny then. 

We will do so, I replied ; and looked at from this distance, 
it is more like a harmony 1 or piece of music 2 than the others 
were. 

In what way ? 

Temperance, I said, is a sort of order and restraint of 
certain pleasures and desires, as people say, and they speak of 
a man as having self-mastery 3 , I know not in what way ; and 
other such facts we can see, clues, as it were, to the quality in 
question. Is it not so ? 

Most certainly. 

1 Greek symphonia, "sounding together," meaning something analogous 
to our " harmony." 

- Greek harmonia, a tune or scale. See 398 ft*, and note. 
8 Lit. "as being stronger than himself." 



Book IV. 165 

Now is not the expression "master of himself" an absur- 
dity ? For a man who is master of himself must also surely be 
subject to himself 1 , and one who is subject, master ; it is the 
same person who is spoken of in all these expressions 2 . 

Obviously. 

But this way of speaking, I think, clearly intends to express, 431 a 
that within the man himself and belonging to his mind there is 
a better and a worse ; and when that which by nature is better 3 
has control over the worse, this is what the phrase "master of 
himself" expresses; certainly it is a phrase of approval; but 
when under the influence of bad nurture or some evil associa- 
tion that which is better, being the smaller 4 , is overcome by 
the quantity of the worse, this is censured as matter of reproach b 
by the mode of speech in question, calling the man who is in 
such a disposition "slave of himself" and profligate. 

And quite right, he said. 

Now turn your eyes to our new city, and you will find in it 
the one of the two characters, for you will say that it is rightly 
called "master of itself," if indeed that, the better part of which 
rules the worse, is to be described as temperate and possessed 
of self-mastery. 



1 Lit. " a man who is stronger than himself must also surely be weaker 
than himself," if e.g. his reason rules his love, it follows that his love is 
subject to his reason; but both alike seem to be "himself" until some 
sense has been alleged in which either of them is not so. Thus, without 
further explanation, these expressions have no sense; they do not distinguish 
the desirable from the undesirable state of mind. 

2 Of course it is not meant to be so, but the distinction which they draw 
falls within a single mind, unless explained as below. 

3 This phrase is further explained in the discussion of Book IX. ; see 
especially 586 E. It would not be right to speak as if one element of mind 
were better from the beginning and by itself than others. The worship of 
"reason" in a narrow sense is as dangerous as the worship of feeling or 
sensation. But Plato's "by nature" does not mean "from the beginning 
and by itself." 

4 See 428 E and note. 



1 66 The Republic of Plato. 

I am doing so, and what you say is true, 
c Yes, and the multitude 1 of various desires and pleasures 
and pains we shall find principally in children and women and 
servants and in the inferior natures which form the majority of 
those who pass for freemen. 

Certainly. 

But for the simple and moderate ones, which are guided by 
deliberation under the influence of reason and right opinion, 
these you will find in (qw, and only in the best born and best 
educated. 

True, he said. 

So you see that just these elements 2 are present in your 
city, and that in it the desires which are in the multitude and 
d the inferior sort are ruled by the desires 3 and the intelligence 
which are in the fewer and better ? 

I see, he answered. 

Then if any city is to be called superior to pleasures and 
desires, and master of itself, this one must be called so too. 

Most certainly. 

And must it not be called temperate also on all these 
grounds ? 

Very much so. 
e And moreover, if in any city the same opinion is in the 
rulers and the ruled on the question who are to be rulers, this 
will be the case in ours ; do you not think so ? 

Emphatically so, he said. 

1 Explaining, in accordance with the last sentence but one and p. 428 
above, how the evil, or at least the unnecessary, element is the "larger." 
See 428 e and note. 

3 The "better" and the "worse," which in the proper relation constitute 
"temperance." 

:: He allows desire as well as intelligence to the latter class, and he 
ought to allow intelligence as well as desire to the inferior class. It is only 
through intelligence that the ruled can respond to the intelligence of the 
ruler. Plato is not here speaking with psychological accuracy, but broadly 
and generally. 



Book IV. 167 

Now in which group of the citizens shall you affirm that 
temperance resides, when they are thus disposed ; in the rulers 
or in the ruled ? 

Surely in both. 

Do you see then, I said, that we were prophesying pretty 
correctly just now, in saying that temperance bears the likeness 
of a kind of harmony ? 

How? 

Because it does not act like courage and wisdom, each of 43 2 a 
which residing in a certain part makes the city in the one case 
wise and in the other brave ; temperance does not act in this 
way, but extends literally throughout the whole society, pro- 
ducing all down the scale 1 a concordant voice of the weaker, the 
stronger, and the middle classes 2 , ranking them, if you choose, 
by intelligence, or if you choose, by strength, or by number or 
by wealth or by any other such standard 3 ; so that we should 
be nearest the truth if we said that temperance is a unanimity 
consisting in the natural 4 harmony of the worse 5 and better as 
to which of them is to rule, both in the State and in the 
individual. 

I altogether agree with you. 

1 Dia pason, lit. "throughout all" (strings or notes). 

2 The idea of the different strings of the lyre, transferred to the members 
of a society. It is curious here to recall Aristotle's criticism that Plato made 
society a unison instead of a harmony. 

3 This very remarkable passage shows the width of Plato's political 
intelligence in his recognition of a variety and evolution in States. Cf. 
Books VIII. and IX. "You may have," he says in effect, "political 
societies holding together on many different bases; the essential point is 
that, whatever the basis, it should be respected and accepted throughout 
the society, and thus you have a ' temperance ' relative to your social 
standard or basis." 

4 "Natural," not=" primitive," but "as prescribed by an inherent 
principle." 

5 Plainly, if the " worse " recognises its " natural " duty to obey the 
better, it is not bad, though it may be comparatively unimportant. Plato 
sometimes uses the careless language of common life, and works free from 
it by degrees. 



1 68 The Republic of Plato. 

Argument. 432 b — 434 c. The quality of Justice consists — 
not merely, as a modern might say, in having or keeping your 
own, although this is included, 433 e, but — in " doing your 07i>n," 
i.e. doing your work or duty, with a strong negative implication 
of not interfe?'ing ivith the work or duty of others [and therefore 
not ivith their " means" 433 e]. See further note on 433 a. 

b Well, I said, we have discerned three out of the four 
qualities in the State ; so at least it seems to us ; but what can 
the remaining kind be, the further ground of excellence in the 
State? For it is plain that this is justice. 

It is plain. 

Then, Glaucon, is it not now our duty to stand like a party 
c of hunters round a cover, giving attention that justice may not 
slip away and disappear before we detect her ? For it is clear 
that she is somewhere hereabouts ; so please look out and take 
pains to see her, in case you should catch sight of her first, and 
point her out to me. 

I wish I could, he answered ; but it is the other way ; if 
you treat me as one who will follow and can see what you 
show him you will be treating me very reasonably. 

Offer up a prayer then, and come on with me. 

I will do so ; only lead on. 

Why, I said, the place looks rough to walk in and deep in 
shade ; it is certainly obscure and hard to explore ; but all the 
same we must go on. 
D Yes, we must, he said. 

So I caught sight of her and called out, Hallo, Glaucon ; I 
think we have found a trace, and I fancy she will not altogether 
escape us. 

Good news, he said. 

Really, I went on, we have been behaving very stupidly. 

How? 

My dear Sir, as it turns out, the thing has been tumbling 
about at our feet all along from the very beginning, and we did 



Book IV. 169 

not see it, but made ourselves most ridiculous ; just as people 
sometimes keep on looking for a thing when they have got it e 
in their hands, so we would not turn our eyes upon it, but kept 
looking away to somewhere at a distance, which probably was 
the reason why we failed to observe it 1 . 

What do you mean ? 

This, that we have for some time been both speaking of it 
and hearing each other speak of it, without perceiving that we 
were saying, in a manner, what it is. 

Your preface seems long when one wants to hear the result. 

Well, I said, hear if there is anything in what I say. That 433 a 
which we laid down from the beginning when we were organis- 
ing our State, as what we ought to effect throughout, that, I 
think, or some form of it 2 , is justice. We laid it down, surely, 
and were constantly insisting on it, if you remember, that each 
one ought to practise some one of the employments belonging 
to the city, that, namely, for which his nature was naturally 
best adapted. 

We did insist upon it. 

And further, that to do one's duty 3 and not to meddle with 



1 The beginner in life and in ethics errs as a rule by looking too far 
afield for his principles and ideals. Cf. the apologue of Naaman the 
Syrian. It is a constant experience that Plato presents in simple and 
intellectual forms ideas which the Bible embodies in intensified and poetical 
expression. 

2 Viz. the form to be described, 443 c ff. 

3 Whatever substantive is used here in the translation must be an in- 
sertion, the Greek being simply "to do one's own." The word "business," 
which readily suggests itself, has unhappy implications to a nineteenth 
century reader. Plato's meaning is probably very wide — to do what be- 
longs to one to do, what falls to one in the application of one's capacities; 
to "play" one's own " part," as in a piece of orchestral music. How this 
covers the everyday idea of justice is pointed out 433 e and 434. There is 
a negative emphasis in the phrase, though to render it by " minding one's 
own business " would make it too narrow. " To do one's duty " is perhaps 
the best rendering all round ; but the Greek has not the notion of something 



iyo The Republic of Plato. 

many businesses is justice, — this too we have heard from many 
others, and ourselves have frequently maintained. 
b Yes, we have. 

This then, my friend, the doing one's duty, when it takes 
place in a certain manner 1 , seems likely to be justice. Do you 
know what makes me think so ? 

No, he answered, but please tell me. 

It seems to me, I said, that what is left over in the State, 
after the qualities we have examined, temperance and courage 
and intelligence, is this, which imparted to all those others the 
power to arise in it ; and that when they have arisen, this is 
what ensures them preservation, so long as it is present. And 
c certainly we said that justice would be what was left over after 
the others, if we could find three out of the four. 

And necessarily so. 

But again, I said, if we had to determine which of these 
qualities being engendered in the State will do most to make 
it good, it would be hard to decide whether this is the agree- 
ment of the ruler and the ruled 2 , or the maintenance in the 
soldiers' minds of an opinion formed by law about what is and 
what is not to be feared 3 , or the intelligence and guardianship 
d present in the rulers 4 , or whether this principle does most to 
make it good, when present in every child and woman and slave 
and freeman and workman and ruler and subject, the principle 
that each is to be one and to do his own duty and not to inter- 
fere with various businesses 5 . 



hard and probably distasteful which is apt to attach to duty in the modern 
mind. 

1 See 443 C. 

2 Temperance. 

3 Courage. 

4 Wisdom. 

B Justice. Note the width of Plato's conception, * quite different in 
principle from what is often ascribed to him. Every creature in the 
community, the children and the slaves included, is to act, not under 



Book IV. 171 

Undoubtedly it is hard to decide. 

Then in promoting the excellence of a State the quality by 
which every one does his duty is a rival to its wisdom and its 
temperance and its courage. 

Quite so. 

Should you not give the name of justice to the quality e 
which rivals these in promoting the excellence of a State? 

Most certainly. 

And see if you come to the same conclusion from this point 
of view. Shall you require the rulers in your State to determine 
the lawsuits ? 

What then ? 

In determining them, will not their chief object be that 
individuals shall neither retain what belongs to others nor be 
deprived of what is their own ' ? 

It will. 

Because it is just ? 

Yes. 

Then in this point of view also the having and doing 
of what belongs to us and is our own, will be admitted to be 
justice. 

It is so. 

See now if you agree with me. Suppose a carpenter to 434 A 
attempt to do a shoemaker's work, or a shoemaker a carpen- 
ter's, either exchanging their tools and privileges, or again the 
same person attempting to do both, do you think that any inter- 
change in these minor matters would seriously injure the State? 

Hardly so. 

But, I imagine, when one who is by nature a workman or 



external constraint, but from an idea or impression of his duty, present in 
his own mind. His duty is by the hypothesis whatever he is fit for. Thus 
justice implies the free and full development of faculty. 

1 Proceeding to show that the above account of justice covers the 
essential aim of the law courts. 



172 The Republic of Plato. 

b some other wealth producer 1 , is subsequently uplifted by wealth 
or numbers or strength or any similar influence till he attempts 
to pass over into the military type 2 , or one of the military class, 
without the requisite merit, attempts to pass into the delibera- 
tive and guardian type, and these 3 then interchange their 
instruments and their privileges, or when the same person 
takes in hand to do all these things at once, then, I fancy, you 
think with me, that the exchange and intermeddling of these 
with one another is the ruin of the State. 

Absolutely so. 
c So the intermeddling and reciprocal interchange with one 
another of the three classes is the greatest mischief to the 
State, and may most rightly be entitled evil-doing in the 
strongest sense. 

Certainly. 

And the gravest evil-doing against one's own State you will 
affirm to be injustice, will you not? 

Unquestionably. 

This then is injustice. And the other side we may state in 
this way ; the doing of what belongs to them by the wealth- 
making 4 the auxiliary 5 , and the guardian class, each of them 

1 Or "money-maker." This is the first indication, given in Plato's 
gradual and casual way, that he is going to bring the satisfaction of 
sensuous desires into intimate connection with the idea of cupidity and 
avarice. 

2 Or "kind." 

3 I.e. representatives of the different classes, as contrasted with different 
persons inside the same class. 

4 See 434 a. This is the first time that "wealth-making" or "money- 
making " is used as a general term for the " third " class in the Republic, 
described 415 A as the husbandmen and the other workmen. It thus 
corresponds in Plato's analysis with the element of desire in human nature, 
and the connection is further insisted on in the later books, e.g. as a con- 
nection between avarice and sensuality, while again, desire, as the demand 
for the true necessaries of life, is an essential ba<is of individual morality, 
and corresponds to an essential function of society. 

5 Or military. 



Book IV. 173 

performing its duty in the State, this, being the reverse of that 
other, will be justice, and will make the city just. 

I think it is so, he said, and not otherwise. d 

Argument. 434 d — 443 b. Verification of the four mo?-al 
qualities of a State by comparison with them as experienced in the 
individual soul 1 . 

We will not yet, I said, affirm it as altogether fixed ; but 
if this principle, when applied to each single human being, is 
admitted in that case also to constitute justice, we will agree 
to the conclusion without more ado ; for what indeed shall we 
have to say against it ? but if not, then we will consider some- 
thing else. But now let us complete our inquiry, in which we 
thought 2 that if we should first set to work to study the quality 
of justice in a larger one among the objects which possess it, 
we should then more easily detect what it is in a single human 
being; and this larger object seemed to us to be the city-state; e 
and so we organised the best city we could, knowing well that 
in a good city there would be justice. So what in that case it 
appeared to us to be, let us compare with the single human 
being, and if it agrees, well and good ; but if justice reveals 
itself as anything different in the single person, we will test it 
by returning to the case of the city ; and perhaps by looking 435 A 
at the two side by side and rubbing 3 them together we shall 
make justice show its light like fire from firesticks, and when it 
has become clear we will establish it in ourselves. 

Why, he said, you speak to good purpose, and we must do 
what you say. 

1 The argument, though plain in its whole bearing, contains some 
difficult steps. The first point, however, is simple (434 D — 436 a) — to 
indicate or assume that the soul has three aspects corresponding to the 
three social classes. 

2 See 368 D. 

3 Constantly "applying" the one to the other; the metaphor is from 
rubbing bits of wood together to kindle fire. 



174 The Republic of Plato. 

Now, I asked, is that which one speaks of as the same, in 
a larger example and in a smaller, dissimilar in the respect 
in which it is the same or similar 1 ? 

Similar, he answered. 
e Then it follows that the just man, in respect of the very 
principle of justice, will differ not at all from the just State, but 
will be similar to it. 

He will be similar. 

Now certainly the State seemed to us to be just, when the 
three kinds of natures contained in it were each of them 
doing its duty; and temperate and brave and wise, owing to 
certain other affections and dispositions of these same kinds 2 . 
Then, my friend, in accordance with this, we shall expect the 
c individual to possess these same forms in his own soul, and to 
merit the term applied to the State by the same affections 
which we found in it. 

Inevitably. 

Then, my dear Sir, we have fallen into a trifling enquiry con- 
cerning the soul, whether it has these three forms in itself or not. 

I do not quite think, he replied, that it is a trifling one. For 
perhaps, Socrates, the proverb is true that " Fine things are 
difficult." 

It appears so, said I ; and, Glaucon, you must clearly 

D understand that in my view there is no chance of apprehending 

this matter precisely by such methods as we are employing in 

our discussions 3 : for it is a difficult path, longer and harder, 

1 E.g. if there is something we call " life " both in a gnat and in an 
elephant, will it, so far as it is life, be similar or dissimilar in these two 
examples? Or, to come nearer to Plato's mind, if we give the name of 
"justice" alike to a great nation refusing to oppress a small one, and to 
one man resisting the sway of cupidity or vengeance in his soul, will it, so 
far as it is justice, be described in dissimilar language in the two cases, or in 
similar? 

2 Or " classes." 

3 Cf. 532 e. Plato had a strong feeling of the imperfection of his 
methods and data. His mind was possessed with a passion for scientific 



Book IV. 175 

that leads to this result ; perhaps however we may achieve it 
in a way adequate to our discussion and enquiry thus far. 

Then must we not be content with that ? he said ; I shall 
be satisfied with it for the present. 

Well, I said, it will certainly be quite sufficient for me. e 

Then do not give it up, but pursue the enquiry. 

Now is it not, I said, quite necessary for us to admit that 
the same forms of mind, and dispositions, are present in each 
one of us as in the State ? For surely they have come there 
from no other source. For it would be absurd to suppose 
that the spirited disposition has not been engendered in States 
by their individual members, in the case of peoples who bear 
this character, such as the inhabitants of Thrace and Scythia 
and, as a rule, in the up-country region 1 ; or the element of 
intelligence, by which one would characterise more especially 
our own part of the world, or the love of wealth 2 , which we 43 6 A 

completeness, and consequently was always progressive. It would, for 
example, be wholly unjustifiable to accept the following passage as a state- 
ment of his psychological conceptions. They develope greatly under his 
analysis even within the Republic. What he actually had in mind, when 
he threw out the suggestion before us, it is impossible to say; but we 
can see from the later books of this Dialogue that the wide outlook of 
modern science and philosophy is in some ways the fulfilment of his 
aspirations. 

1 Lit. "the upper region"; might = " highland," but moi-e probably 
the region remote from civilisation and the sea, practically limited to the 
North, whether the word " upper " can indicate that or not. Aristotle 
seems to mean the same by " the cold regions of Europe." The idea here 
implied, that Greece was the centre of the world, both geographically and 
in the happy combination of qualities in its natives, is met with more than 
once in Greek writers. The non-Greek European races appeared to them 
fierce and passionate, the Asiatics clever and ingenious but wanting in 
spirit ; an extraordinary contrast with the modern conception of West and 
East as we find it, say in Browning's Luria. The Greek race alone, they 
thought, had a happy balance of spirit ahd intelligence. 

2 Involving, oddly to our ideas, at once the lower desires, and the 
technical ingenuity which satisfies them; the characteristic of the lowest 
class in Plato's State. 



176 The Republic of Plato. 

should assert to belong principally to the inhabitants of Phoe- 
nicia and Egypt. 

It would be absurd, he said. 

Then this is so, I said, and it is not hard to see. 

No. 

But now we come to a hard question 1 , whether we have 
here a single power 2 by which we perform our various kinds of 
action, or whether there are three, and we do one kind of thing 
with one and one with another ; for example, whether we study 
by one of the powers 3 in us, and are angry by another, and by 
a third have desires for the pleasures of food and sex and any 
b kindred affections, or do we act with the whole soul 4 in each 
of these directions, when we have got our impulse ? These are 
the points which will be hard to determine adequately. 

I think so too. 



1 See note on 434 d. The second point (436 A — 441 c) in verifying the 
existence of the four moral qualities in the soul, is to find out whether its 
three aspects or kinds or tendencies are really different from one another, 
so that they can stand in the relations required to constitute the moral 
qualities. This point is stated here, 436 A — B, answered first about reason 
and desire, 439 D, and then about all three "kinds," 441 C. 

2 No substantive in the Greek. 

3 No substantive in the Greek; the phrase is simply "one of the (neuter 
plural article) in us." This resource of the Greek language gives Plato's 
psychology a capacity of not committing itself by premature classification, 
which a modern may envy. 

4 Plato is not suggesting that it is open to discussion whether the soul 
is a unity or in three separate parts. He is merely considering, with refer- 
ence to the special problem before him, whether the modes of action of the 
soul are sufficiently distinguishable to conflict with or control one another 
in the way demanded by his description of the moral qualities. 



Book IV. 177 

Argument. 436 B — 43 7 a. The standard of sameness and 
difference ; i.e. the prificiple known in Logic as the Law of Con- 
tradiction, a step within the discussion (436 a — 441c) whether 
the three "kinds" in the soul are or are not "different." 

Then let us try as follows to distinguish whether they are 
the same with one another, or different. 

How? 

It is plain that the same thing cannot be brought to act or 
to be affected in opposite ways at the same time in the same 
part of it and in the same relation ; so that if ever we find this 
taking place among the kinds in the soul, we shall know that 
they are really not the same, but several. c 

Granted. 

Now consider the case I put. 

Say on. 

Is it possible for the same thing at the same time to stand 
still and to move, in the same part of it ? 

By no means. 

Let us settle the point yet more precisely, lest we should 
get into difficulties at a later stage. If any one were to say of 
a man standing still, but moving his hands and his head, that 
the same man was standing still and moving at the same time, 
I suppose we should not admit that this was the right way to 
state the case, but should maintain this to be, that part of the d 
man was at rest and part was in movement. Is it not so ? 

It is. 

And if such an objector were to refine his argument to a 
still further subtlety, by urging that tops which spin with their 
pegs 1 fixed in a single spot, are, as a whole, at once standing 
still and in movement, or that this is so with anything else 
which goes round in a circle and does so in the same place, 
we should reject the conclusion ; since when at rest and in 

1 " Kentron" goad or point, hence the peg of a top, or, I suppose, one 
point of a pair of compasses, whence our word "centre." 

B. 12 



178 The Republic of Plato. 

motion in these ways, it is not with the same part of them- 
E selves. But we should maintain that they have in them a 
vertical axis and a circumference, and that as regards their 
axis they are standing still, for they do not deflect in any 
direction, but as regards their circumference they are moving in 
a circle ; but whenever one of them while going round inclines 
its vertical axis to right or left, or forwards or backwards, then 
it cannot in any sense be standing still. 

And rightly, he said. 

Then no argument of this kind will confound us, nor go 
any way to make us believe, that anything, while the same, 
437 a could at the same time, in the same part, and in the same 
relation, act or be affected in opposite ways. 

It will not make me believe it. . 

But yet, that we may not be obliged to protract our discus- 
sion by going through all such objections and establishing 
their falsity, let us assume that this is so 1 and go forward, on 
the understanding that if at any time this shall appear to be 
otherwise, all the conclusions which we have drawn from it 
shall be held to be undone. 

Yes, he said, we must do so. 

Argument. 437 b — 437 d. There are oppositions in the 
soul, of the general nature of acceptance versus rejection ; a?i appli- 
cation of the argument, that opposite behaviour indicates differe?it 
elements to be concerned in it, and so a part of the discussion 
436 a — 441 c. See note on 436 a. 

b Should you not then, I said, set down assent and dissent, 
and the longing to get something and the refusal of it, and 
acceptance and rejection, and everything of this class, to be 
opposites to one another whether as actions or as affections 
(for this will make no difference)? 

1 Viz. that the same thing cannot behave in opposite ways at the same 
time, etc. 



Book IV, 179 

Yes, he said, they are opposites. 

Well then, I went on, should you not set down hunger and 
thirst, and in general the desires, and to be willing, and to 
wish, and everything of the kind, as belonging to those types 
which have just been mentioned. For example, should you c 
not affirm that the soul of him who desires, in every case 1 , 
either longs for that which he desires, or accepts that which he 
wishes to come to him, or again, in as far as he is willing that 
something should be given him, assents to it in answer to itself, 
as if to some one asking a question, being anxious for its 
coming to pass ? 

Yes. 

And then to be averse, and not to be willing, and not to 
desire, we must rank under the head of the soul rejecting and 
repelling a thing from herself, and under all terms which are 
opposites of those former ones ? d 

Unquestionably. 

Argument. 437 d — 43 9 b. One thing or class of things 
concerned in these cases of opposition is what we call " desires" 
by which we mean a positive impulse to the corresponding object, 
as thirst is to drink. A further step in the discussion 436 a — 
441 c. 

This 2 being so, we shall say that desires constitute one type 
or kind, and the clearest cases of them are what we call thirst 
and hunger ? 

1 The following are different ways of describing the readiness or desire 
for an act or thing; the point is that they are all affirmative, like Yes 
opposed to No, and so "opposites" of the negative attitudes, mentioned 
below. 

2 The purpose of the refinements of argument in this section is to clear 
away possible objections and enable the simple statement in the last sentence 
of it to be maintained, viz. "the soul of the thirsty man, in as far as he is 
thirsty, wishes nothing else than to drink" (and therefore " opposition" to 
this act of drinking when thirsty must spring from some mental element 
which is different from desire). 

12 2 



180 The Republic of Plato, 

We shall. 

Thirst is for drink, and hunger for food ? 

Yes. 

Now in as far as thirst is thirst, will it be a desire in the soul of 
anything beyond what we say 1 ? For example is "thirst" thirst 
for hot drink or for cold, or for much or for little, or in a word 
for any particular quality 2 of drink? Or is the case rather 
e that, if there is heat in the thirst it will produce the desire of 
something hot in addition to the desire of drink, and if there 
is coldness, that of something cold ? And if, from the presence 
of quantity, the thirst is much, it will give rise to the desire of 
much, and if it is little to that of little ? But to be thirsty, as 
such, can never be a desire of anything but of its natural 
object, drink as such, and hunger too of its object, that is 
food? 

Yes, he said; each desire, as such, is only for its natural 
438 a object as such ; to be for this or that kind of object belongs to 
the additions. 

Then let no one find us unprepared, and confound us by 
urging that no man desires mere drink but only good drink, 
nor mere food but only good food 3 . All men no doubt desire 
what is good ; so if thirst is a desire it will be for good drink 
or whatever else the desire may be for, and so with all the rest. 

Really, he answered, such an objection might be held to 
have something in it. 
b Well, but, I answered, in all that is such as to be <?/some- 



1 I.e. beyond "drink," the object mentioned in the last sentence. 

2 It sounds odd that "much" or "little" should count as a "quality," 
but the meaning is easy to see. If you say, "I want to drink a great deal," 
of course you have added a "qualification" to the simple statement, "I want 
to drink." 

3 Briefly, the point of this objection would be that desire might limit 
itself, and so reject certain of its objects, without implying another mental 
element opposing it. Plato answers that " good " is implied in desire, and 
constitutes no limitation. 



Book IV. 181 

thing, what is such and such is tf/what is such and such, while 
what is merely itself is ^/"what is merely itself 1 . 

I don't understand, he said. 

Don't you understand that the greater is such as to be 
greater than 2 something? 

Quite so. 

Greater than the less ? 

Yes. 

And the much greater than the much less, is it not ? 

Yes. 

And the greater at some time or other than the less at some 
time or other, and the greater in the future than the less in the 
future ? 

Why, of course, he said. 

And is it not so with the more in relation to the fewer, and c 
the double to the half, and all cases of that kind 3 , and again 
with the heavier in relation to the lighter, and the quicker to 
the slower 4 , and once more with hot things in relation to cold 5 , 
and everything like that ? 

Certainly it is. 

And what about the sciences ? Is it not the same rule ? 
Science itself is science of the knowable itself, or whatever we 
ought to take science to be "of," but a particular science, 
being such and such, is of a particular branch of knowledge, 

1 The sentence is made difficult by the simplicity of the terms used, 
partly for fun, though we must remember that the technical language of 
logic did not yet exist. The following sentence explains the meaning. 

2 In Greek the comparative is followed by a genitive case, so that 
" such as to be greater than (lit. of) something " is an example of " things 
which are such as to be of something" in the last sentence — relative 
terms. 

3 Some of the simplest cases of terms relative to each other, those of 
mere quantity. 

4 Relative terms of quantity involving a difference of quality. 

5 Stated as mere opposite qualities, though of course there is a relation 
of quantity underneath them. 



1 82 The Republic of Plato. 

which is such and such. I am thinking of a case like this ; 
d when there came to be a science of the production of a house, 
did 1 it not take on a difference from the other sciences, so as 
to be called the science of house-building? 

No doubt. 

Was not this by reason of its being such and such, like 
none of the other sciences ? 

Yes. 

Then it came to be such and such itself, because it was of 
something which was such and such. 

It is so. 

Well, then, I said, this is what you must take it that I 
meant to say a moment ago, if you now understand it ; that 
with everything which is such as to be of anything, itself alone 
is of the other's self alone, but if the other is such and such, 
e this which is of it is such and such. And I am not saying that 
they are like what they are of, as for instance that the science 
of what is healthy and unhealthy is healthy and unhealthy, and 
that of evil and good is evil and good ; but, from the moment 
that 2 it became the science not merely of that 3 of which science 
is, but of such and such things, and these were the healthy and 
unhealthy, then the consequence was that itself too came to 
be such and such, and this fact caused it no longer to be 
called simply "science," but, with the addition of the such- 
ness 4 , "medical science." 

I understand, he said, and I agree. 
439 a Thirst, now, I said ; should you not affirm that it is, in its 
nature, one of these " ofs " ? Thirst, I suppose, is of — . 

1 He puts the logical distinction between genus and species as if it arose 
by a definite step in time. This is merely to give his explanation vividness. 
"When science took to building houses it began to merit, and obtained, the 
distinctive name of 'the science of house-building.'" 

2 See note on 438 D just above. 

3 E.g. the knowable or truth in general, as opposed to the objects of 
particular sciences. 

4 Or "quality." 



Book IV. 183 

I should, he broke in ; it is of drink. 

Then of such and such drink there is such and such thirst, 
but thirst in itself is neither of much nor little, nor of good nor 
bad, nor, in a word, of any such and such at all, but the nature 
of thirst itself is to be of drink itself and nothing else. 

Quite so. 

Then the thirsty man's soul, in as far as he is thirsty, wishes 
nothing else than to drink, and this is what it longs for and b 
what it has an impulse towards \ 

Clearly so. 

Argument. 439 b — d. There is something which can directly 
oppose desire, and therefore must be something different (according 
to the standard of the Law of Contradiction). And it appears 
to be reasoning or calculation. So Desire and Reasoning or 
calculation are two different kinds in the soul. First conclusion 
in discussio?i 436 a — 441 c, see note on 436 a. 

So then if anything ever drags the soul the other way when 
it is thirsty, must it not be something in it different from the 
actual part which is thirsty, and which leads it, like an animal, 
to drink? For, we maintain 2 , the same thing can certainly 
never act in opposite ways at the same time with the same 
part 3 of itself in relation to the same object. 

1 See note on 437 D. The above argument, which leads up to this 
sentence, may be paraphrased in some such way as this. " You ought to 
mean what you say, i.e. you ought to stand by what is implied in what you 
say. If you admit (as will be assumed in the next section) that one can be 
thirsty and yet conquer one's desire to drink, you must not shuffle out of 
the admission by saying e.g. that it need only mean that one was thirsty for 
wine, and did not care to drink the water offered to one. This may some- 
times be true, but it is not what the words mean, and the plain meaning 
of the words is accepted by common sense, viz. that one can be thirsty and 
yet conquer the impulse to drink, which is one's thirst. This implies some 
agency other than desire." 

2 See 436 b ff. 

3 It is worth noticing that the principle is so stated, both here and 
above 436 B, as to suggest that the same thing may include conflicting 



1 84 The Republic of Plato, 

Certainly not. 

Just as, I imagine, it is not right to say of an archer, that 
his hands push away the bow and draw it to him at the same 
moment ; but the truth is that one hand pushes it away, and 
the other draws it to him. 

Quite so. 
c Now are we to say that sometimes people when thirsty 
decline to drink 1 ? 

Why it is constantly the case with very many people. 

Then what are we to say of them ? I asked. Is it not that 
their mind contains that which urges them to drink and that 
which hinders them from drinking, which latter is different 
from and stronger than that which urges them ? 

I think so. 

Now does not that which hinders such actions arise, when- 
d ever it arises, from reasoning 2 , while the influences 3 which pull 
and drag us towards them, present themselves by means of 
affections and morbid states ? 

It appears so. 

Then it will not be irrational for us to esteem them to be 
two and different from one another, entitling that wherewith 
the soul reasons the reasonable 4 part of it, and that wherewith 
it loves 5 and hungers and thirsts and is agitated by all the 



elements or parts. Thus Plato's argument does not deny the unity of the 
mind, in asserting its diversity. 

1 The statement of plain fact, which the previous section was meant to 
guard from being explained away. 

2 Or calculation. Reason is here introduced as a prohibitive and calcu- 
lating mood. And this is a very important way of regarding the intelligence, 
but it is not at all a complete way, and Plato does not mean that it is. His 
doctrine of "Music" has already anticipated the deeper expression of the 
later books, according to which the intelligent side of the soul is an absorb- 
ing positive passion for order and truth. 

3 No substantive in the Greek. 

4 Or "calculative." 

6 In the sense of desire. 



Book IV. 185 

other desires, the irrational and appetitive, the associate of 
certain replenishments 1 or pleasures. 

No, he said ; we may reasonably consider them thus. E 

Argument. 439 D — 441 C. The "spirited" element distin- 
guished as a third distinct "kind" in the soul. {Second and 
final conclusion of discussion 436 a — 441 c. See note on 436 a.) 

Then we may take these to be two kinds 2 which we have 
distinguished as present in the soul; but will the element 
of spirit, that by which we are indignant, be a third kind, or of 
one nature with either of these ? 

Perhaps with the second, the appetitive. 

Well, I said, I once heard a story, in which I believe, that 
Leontius the son of Aglaion, on his way from Peiraeus to 
Athens under the north wall on the outside, noticing some 
dead bodies lying at the executioner's, at the same time was 
desirous 3 to look at them, and shrank from doing so and tried 
to keep himself away ; but finally his desire overcame him, 440 a 
and he pulled 4 his eyes wide open, and running up to the 
corpses exclaimed, Take what you want, you wretches, and 
glut yourselves with the noble spectacle. 

I have heard it myself, he said. 

But this story, I continued, indicates that the anger some- 
times makes war on the desires, as if they were different things. 

Yes, it does. 

1 Plato represented the satisfaction of desire, which he treated as 
practically the same thing with pleasure, under the metaphor of "replenish- 
ment," the filling up of a vacuum or deficiency. This does not merely 
mean that in eating and drinking we put something inside ourselves, though 
this may have suggested the metaphor; but further that in faintness, weari- 
ness, pain, or even in perplexity and ignorance, we seem to be below our 
proper state, defective in some way, and the removal of our uneasiness 
seems like filling up a deficiency. 

2 The reasonable and the appetitive. 

3 Verb implying the appetitive tendency — desire. 

4 With his fingers, I suppose, as a sort of revenge on them for their desire. 



1 86 The Republic of Plato. 

And do we not see, I said, in many other cases, when 
desires are constraining any one against his reason, that he 
b reviles 1 and resents the constraining force in himself; and as if 
in a civil war between two factions the spirit 2 of such an one 
becomes the ally of his reason? But the spirit taking part 
with the desires, when reason judges that she ought not to be 
opposed, is something which I fancy you would not say that 
you had ever observed to take place either in yourself or in 
any one else. 

By Zeus, no, he answered. 
c Well but, I said, when anyone believes himself to be in the 
wrong, is he not, the more noble he is, the less able to be 
angry at enduring hunger and cold and anything else of the 
kind at the hands of one whom he believes to be acting justly, 
and, for here is my point, is it not true that his anger refuses to 
be aroused against that other ? 

True. 

But again, when one thinks he is being wronged, does not 
his anger in this case boil and rage and take part with what it 
thinks to be just, and holding out the more for hunger cold and 
d all such like sufferings both triumph in the mind and persist in its 
noble efforts, till the man has either succeeded or perished, or 
his anger has calmed down, being called off by the reason 
within himself, like a sheep dog 3 by the shepherd. 

Yes, he said ; that is a good illustration of your point ; and 
indeed in our city we appointed the auxiliaries like sheep-dogs 4 
to be under the authority of the rulers — the shepherds of the 
State. 

1 Cf. Romans vii. 24, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver 
me out of this body of death?" (R.V. margin). 

2 The tendency to resentment or indignation ; it seems necessary to 
retain the rendering "spirit" in order to show a connection with the 
"spirited" element of the soul. 

8 The original comparison for the " spirit." See 375 A it". 
4 See e.g. 416 A. 



Book IV. 187 

You understand my meaning rightly, I said, but have you 
thought of this also ? e 

What? 

That our view of the " spirited " element is the opposite of 
what it was just now. For then 1 we were supposing it to be a 
kind of desire, but now we maintain it to be a long way from 
that, and to be much more disposed, in the civil war of the 
mind, to take its stand on the side of the reason. 

Just so. 

Then do we take it to be different from this too, or to be 
one kind of reason, so as to make not three but two kinds in 
the soul, the reasoning and the appetitive ? Or as in the State 
there were three kinds that formed its system, the money- 441 A 
making, the auxiliary and the deliberative, is there in the soul 
too this third kind, the spirited, auxiliary 2 to the rational part 
by nature, if it has not been depraved by evil nurture ? 

Necessarily it is a third. 

Yes, I said, if it is shown to be something other than the 
reasoning part, as it was shown to be something other than the 
appetitive. 

Why, he said, there is no difficulty in showing it. In 
children for instance one can see this, that from their birth 
onwards they are full of spirit, while as for reasoning, some b 
men seem to me never to partake of it at all, and the majority 
not till late. 

1 439 E. As Jowett and Campbell point out, Socrates out of courtesy 
associates himself with Glaucon's erroneous suggestion. 

2 Here and in 440 B Plato is describing, so to speak, a fair average soul 
— the soul of a good citizen. He knows, as the end of this sentence and 
many .other discussions show, that the soul is capable both of depths and of 
heights which are not here represented. For the possible degradation of 
the "spirited" element cp. 590 b (cited by Jowett and Campbell). "Is it 
not flattery and meanness when one subjugates this same principle, the 
spirited, under the multitudinous beast (the image of appetite) and trains 
it by ignominy for the sake of wealth and the greediness of that monster, to 
become a monkey instead of a lion ? " 



1 88 The Republic of Plato. 

By Zeus, I answered, you are right. And further one may 
see in the animals that what you say is true. And besides this, 
we may appeal to the passage in Homer, which we mentioned 
in one place above, for there Homer has distinctly represented 
c in his poetry 1 the part 2 which has made an estimate 3 of what is 
better and what is worse, rebuking the part which is angry 
without reason, as one thing addressing another. 

Certainly you say true. 



Argument. 441 c — 443 b completes the argument 
43 4 D, of which the discussion 436 A — 441c was a part, by point- 
ing out i?i the individual soul the qualities corresponding to the 
four moral qualities of the State. 

All this, then, I said, we have swum 4 through with difficulty; 
and we are fairly well agreed that the same kinds and in the 
same number 5 are present in the State, and in the soul of every 
one. 

It is so. 

Then at this point it further becomes inevitable that as, 
and by what, the State was wise, so, and by that, the private 
person is wise ? 

No doubt. 
D And as, and by what, the private person is brave, by that, 
and so, the State is brave; and in the same way both parties 6 
possess all the other elements of excellence. 

Inevitably. 

1 See 390 D above. 

2 No substantive in the Greek. 

■ ; The word implies reckoning up a sum. This is of course a simple 
type of the attempt to look at all the bearings and consequences of an action 
in its place in our life. 

4 Anticipates the simile of the great waves, in the later part of the 
Republic. 

5 Viz. three. 

6 State and private person. 



Book IV. 189 

Then, Glaucon, I imagine, we shall affirm that a man is 
just too, in the same way in which the State on its side was just. 

This again is quite inevitable. 

But I presume that we have not forgotten this, that the State 
was just, by each kind in it doing its duty, the kinds being three. 

I do not think we have forgotten it. 

We must bear in mind then that each of us, too, in whom 
each of the kinds 1 within him does its duty, will be a just man e 
and one who does his duty. 

Certainly we must bear it in mind. 

Then it belongs, does it not, to the reasoning part to rule, 
being wise, and having the task of forethought on behalf of the 
mind as an entirety 2 , and to the spirited to be its subject and ally? 

Quite so. 

Then will not, as we said 3 , a mixture of music and gym- 
nastic make them harmonious, giving tension and vigour to 
the one 4 by noble thoughts and studies 5 while relaxing and 442 a 
abating the other 6 , taming it by harmony and rhythm. 

Completely so. 

And these two then having been thus nurtured, and in 
real truth having learned their duty 7 and been educated, will 
have the government of the appetitive part, which forms 

1 No substantive in Greek. 

2 This is the true ground of the sovereignty of intelligence, and when it 
is forgotten, the principle that intelligence is the highest thing is liable to 
dangerous extravagances. 

3 410 — 12. 

4 The reason, or "philosophic" (culture-loving) part or kind. 

5 This strengthening of the mind on its refined and intelligent side — 
screwing it to the sticking point — would naturally, according to the earlier 
account, be ascribed to gymnastic. The fact is that music, considered as 
the endeavour to make life harmonious throughout all its aspects, tended as 
we saw, to become the type of all education by whatever means. 

6 The "spirited" temper. 

7 Lit. having "learned their own"; a counterpart of the phrase "doing 
their own," by which justice is always described. Our true duty and place 
has to be discovered, and we to be adapted to it. 



190 The Republic of Plato. 

the greatest bulk 1 of the mind in every man, and is by 
nature the most insatiate of wealth ; which they will watch, 
lest through being indulged in the pleasures which are 
called bodily, it should grow big and strong, and refuse in its 
e turn to do its duty, but should endeavour to subjugate and to 
govern what it has no right to in virtue of its kind, and thus 
overthrow the entire life of all the parts. 

Most certainly. 

Will not these two then, moreover, be the best guardians 
against enemies from without, on behalf of mind and body as 
a whole, the one taking counsel for them, and the other fight- 
ing their battles, obeying the ruler and by its courage accom- 
plishing his designs ? 

True, 
c Then again in virtue of this part we call each man brave, 
when his spirited temper preserves throughout both pleasures 
and pains the law of what is to be feared and what is not, as 
taught it by the reason 2 . 

You are right. 

And we call him "wise" in virtue of that little 3 part which 
was the ruler within him and gave this instruction 4 , seeing that 
it possesses in itself the knowledge of what is expedient for 

1 An expression constantly recurring in Plato, which conveys his sense 
of the irreducible multitude and confusion of the desires as we meet with 
them, in contrast with the oneness of intelligence. He does not mean that 
this disorderly bulk is a feature of the soul as it ought to be. Cf. 588 — 9 
and 611. The positive education of desire, too, by adapting it to the objects 
of life in their true order and importance, is implied but not expressed in 
the present passage. It is more fully accented in the later books of the 
Republic. 

2 Cf. 429 B,c. The idea of "courage against pleasure," frequent in 
Plato, tends of course to make courage continuous with temperance. We 
noted in 386 — 8 how readily the one passes into the other. 

3 " Little " symbolises the unity or centrality of intelligence, in which 
the whole is, as it were, brought to a point. Cf. last note but one ; and for 
the parallel " in the state " see 428 E. 

4 In the education. 



Book IV. 191 

each severally and for the community of these three kinds as 
a whole. 

Quite so. 

And again, do we not call him temperate by the friendliness 
and concord of these very parts, when the one ruler and the d 
two which are ruled are in agreement that the reasoning part 
should rule, and the latter raise no insurrection against the 
former. 

Temperance certainly, he said, is this and nothing else, 
both in a State and in a private person. 

And just, too, he will assuredly be, by the quality and in 
the way 1 which we are continually speaking of. 

Quite necessarily. 

Well then, I went on ; is justice now less distinct to us, so 
as to seem something different from what we saw it to be in 
the State ? 

I for my part do not think so. e 

For we might wholly confirm our view, I said, if there is 
still any doubt in our minds, by applying commonplace tests 2 
to the quality. 

Of what kind ? 

For example, if we had to determine about the State which 
we have described, and the man who is like it in his nature 
and his training, whether such an one seems likely to steal a 
deposit of gold or silver which he has received for custody, do 
you think that any one would suppose him likely to do it, and 443 A 
not, rather, men of a different character ? 

I think that no one would suppose so. 

And he would be far from sacrilege and embezzlement, and 
from treachery, whether private against his friend or public 
against States? 



1 Viz. by the principle of doing one's own duty. 

2 See above 433 E where "justice in the State" was treated in the 
same way. 



192 The Republic of Plato. 

Far from it all. 

And he would not be in the least degree untrustworthy, 
whether in promises on oath, or in other forms of covenant. 

Of course not. 

Acts of adultery, again, or neglect of parents, or omission 
to do service to the gods, belong to any character but this. 

Yes, indeed. 
b Is not the reason of all this that in him each of the kinds 
within his soul does its duty with regard to governing and 
being governed ? 

It is this and nothing else. 

Then shall you go further, and look for justice to be other 
than this quality, which gives this character to all those who 
have it, both men and States ? 

By Zeus, he said, I shall not. 

Argume?it. 443 b to the end of the book : condusio7i as to the 
inward and essential nature of justice a?id injustice, and inference 
to their respective desirableness, from their being the health or 
disease of " that very essence whereby we live " : followed by sug- 
gestions for a further comparison of justice or goodness and 
injustice or badness as at work in further social phases corre- 
sponding to further psychical phases l . 

Then our dream is completely fulfilled, that is, the suspicion 
which we expressed 2 , that from the very beginning, in found- 
c ing our State, we had probably, by some deity's guidance, hit 
upon a first step to justice, and in some sort a type of it. 

Most certainly. 

1 Note that in treating the inward state as the essence of morality Plato 
most carefully links it with the outer act, and system of external and social 
life. He is wholly free from the dangerous separation of faith and works. 
The further discussion of the bad forms of society and soul is carried out in 
Books VIII. and IX. 



Book IV. 193 

So, Glaucon, ft really was a sort of image 1 of justice (and 
that was why it helped us), when we said 2 that it was right for 
the man who had a natural bent for shoemaking to make shoes 
and do nothing else, and for him who was fit for carpentering 
to carpenter, and so on with the rest. 

It appears so. 

For in reality, as it seems, justice was something of the 
kind, only not with reference to the external 3 doing of one's d 
duty, but to that inward action which in very truth deals with 
the self and what is most one's own; that is, when a man does 
not permit each element within him to do what does not 
belong to it, nor the kinds within his soul to meddle with 
one another's tasks, but in reality has set in order what is his 
own, and won the government of himself, and organised him- 
self, and come to be at peace with himself, and has adjusted 
to one another the three kinds, actually like three fixed notes 
of the scale, higher, lower, and middle, having bound into one e 
all these and anything between them 4 and having made 5 him- 
self completely a unity out of a multiplicity, temperate and in 

1 Plato makes great use of the idea of images or symbols. An image 
or symbol is really a simple and partial example of the fact or principle 
which it symbolises, e.g. we use bread as a symbol of bodily and spiritual 
nourishment or of hospitality. Cp. the images or likenesses of moral 
qualities, 402 c, compared to letters reflected in water or in mirrors. 

2 37o A, B. 

3 By this amendment the appearance of rigidity and monotony which 
might attach to the first description of justice is in principle removed. 
"One man, one work," is after all only a symbol of justice, a rough 
approximation which embodies the fundamental truth that it takes all 
sorts to make a world. The real point is that the spiritual capacities 
should be developed in harmonious organisation, which involves, of course, 
an external harmony as a part of it. Of what variety human nature 
is capable, without injurious distraction, then becomes a mere question 
of fact. 

4 Suggesting that the psychology so far has only been a rough sketch 
for practical purposes. 

5 See note above 44 1 A. 

B. 13 



194 The Republic of Plato. 

tune, — and then, and in this spirit, enters upon action whatever 
it may be, whether concerning the acquisition of wealth or the 
treatment of his own body, or whether it be something political, 
or about his private matters of business ; in all these cases 
esteeming and describing as just and noble a course of action 
which preserves such a disposition and helps to perfect it, and 
to the knowledge which governs such a course giving the name 
444 a of wisdom; and holding all action for unjust which tends to 
break down such a disposition, and to the opinion 1 which 
governs it giving the name of ignorance. 

What you say, Socrates, is quite true. 

Well then, I said, if we were to affirm that we have found 
the just man and State, and justice as a quality in them, we 
should hardly, I imagine, be thought in error. 

No, by Zeus, he said. 

Are we to affirm it then ? 

We are. 
b Then let that be, I said ; for next, I suppose, we ought to 
examine injustice. 

Clearly so. 

Then must it not be a civil war, so to speak, of these three, 
an over-meddlesomeness and interference and insurrection of 
some one part against the totality 2 of the soul, trying to 
dominate in her contrary to fitness, while being by nature of a 
kind which ought, properly, to be the servant of that which is 
of the ruling race? Something of this sort, I imagine, and 

1 "Opinion" emphatically contrasted with "knowledge." It seems 
odd to treat ignorance as a kind of opinion. But opinion, for Plato, and 
indeed for ourselves, includes mistake and illusion ; while, again, ignorance 
does not always mean mere blankness or absence of ideas, but is often 
applied to the erroneous thoughts of an ignorant man. George Eliot some- 
where satirises the feeling that a man's ignorance is of more reliable quality 
than a woman's — that is, his behaviour where he is ill-informed. 

2 Not, observe, against the intelligence, except in as far as the intelligence 
represents the mind as a whole. 



Book IV. 195 

rooted in distraction and confusion of the "kinds," are injustice 
and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance 1 , and, in short, 
all wickedness. 

The very same, he said. c 

Then, I asked, is it not now plainly manifest what all these 
are — the doing of unjust actions 2 , and wrong-doing, and again 
the doing of just actions, seeing that injustice and justice 
themselves are made clear? 

In what way ? 

That, I said, they differ not at all from healthy and 
unhealthy living 3 , that being in the body as these in the soul. 

How? 

Healthy living 4 produces health in the body, and unhealthy 
living disease. 

Yes. 

Then in the same way does not the doing of just acts d 
produce justice in the soul, and of unjust, injustice? 

Infallibly. 

Now to produce health is to constitute the elements of the 
body so as to dominate and be dominated by one another 
according to nature 5 , and to produce disease is to constitute 



1 The opposites of the four typical moral qualities or cardinal virtues, 
Justice, Temperance, Courage, and Wisdom. 

2 To be distinguished from "injustice" as the act from the habit. 
The importance of moral habituation is clearly stated in the following 
sentences. 

3 No substantive. If we supply, say, "conditions," as a modern very 
likely would, the point of the comparison with particular actions is 
neglected. 

4 See previous note. 

5 Nature, cf. 370 A and B. Aristotle says, "whatever a thing is when 
its growth is brought to perfection, that we assert to be the nature of the 
thing" — as we say, what it is born for. Nature for the Greek thinkers was 
much what it was for Goethe and Wordsworth, the productive principle of 
life in the universe. 



\g6 TJie Republic of Plato. 

them so as to rule and be ruled by one another contrary to 
nature. 

Yes, it is. 

Then is not to produce righteousness, to constitute the 
elements of the soul so as to dominate and be dominated by 
one another according to nature, and to produce injustice, to 
constitute them so as to rule and be ruled by one another 
contrary to nature ? 

Completely so, he said. 
e Then virtue 1 , as it seems, will be a kind of health and good 
condition of the soul ; and vice will be its disease, and ugliness, 
and infirmity. 

It is so. 

Then is it not the case, in general, that noble practices 
lead to the acquisition of excellence, and ignoble ones to that 
of vice ? 

Necessarily. 

At this point then, as it seems, it remains for us to consider 
445 a if, moreover, it is profitable 2 to do just acts and to pursue noble 
practices and to be a just man, whether or not one's being 
such remains unknown, or rather to do injustice and to be 
unjust, supposing that one suffers no penalty, and does not 
meet with chastisement to make him better. 

Why, Socrates, he said, to me the enquiry appears to be' 
becoming ridiculous. We think life not worth living with a 
bodily constitution that is being ruined, no, not if we have all 
possible foods and drinks and wealth and power ; and shall we 
believe it to be worth living when the constitution of that very 
1; essence 3 by which we live is being confounded and ruined, if 

1 Or "excellence." We must not tie down Plato's meaning to the 
modern use of "virtue," which is very narrow and negative. 

- Cf. 367 D and 368 c. But the issue is more plainly stated in the 
contention of Thrasymachus in Book 1. 344 c. 

3 No substantive in the Greek. The Greek phrase is a happy expression 
of what a Greek thinker really meant by the soul, viz. that, whatever it may 



Book IV. 197 

only a man do what in the world he wishes, except indeed 
what will rid him of vice and injustice and give him virtue and 
excellence ; these two opposites proving to be such as we have 
described them ? 

Yes, it is ridiculous, I said ; but since we have arrived at a 
point from which we may most clearly discern that this is as 
we say, we must not give up the attempt. 

By Zeus, he said, that is the last thing we should do. 

Then come up here, I said, that you may see for yourself 
how many forms there are of vice, which in my judgement are c 
worthy of observation l . 

I follow you, he said ; only say on. 

Yes, I continued, it appears to me, looking as it were from 
a high place, since the argument has brought us up to one, 
that there is one form of excellence and infinite forms of bad- 
ness, but of these four 2 in particular which are worth men- 
tioning. 

How do you mean ? 

There are probably as many modes of soul as there are 
modes of polities forming distinct types. 

How many ? 

Five modes of polities, I answered, and five of the soul. d 

Say what they are. 

I say that one of them would be this mode of polity which 
we have described, but it might be called by two names ; for if 
one man arose among the rulers, superior to all, it would be 
called a monarchy 3 ; if the superiors were several, an aristo- 
cracy. 

be, by which we live, i.e. which is the centre and principle of all pnases of 
our life, and finds its manifestation in them. 

1 He only pretends to touch the main or typical forms, not to treat the 
subject exhaustively. 

2 The forms of soul corresponding to military aristocracy, plutocracy, 
democracy, and unconstitutional monarchy or despotism. Books VIII. and 
IX. are devoted to an account of these. 

3 "Monarchy," lawful and for the highest benefit of the subject, is for 



198 The Republic of Plato. 

True, he said. 

This then, I continued, I call one form ; for neither a 
number of rulers, nor one if he arose, would disturb any of the 
e more considerable laws of the polity, as long as they adhered 
to the nurture and education 1 which we have described. 
Naturally they would not, he replied. 

Plato the very opposite extreme politically to Despotism or unconstitutional 
monarchy, which the Greeks, and Plato among them, called Tyranny. Of 
course it is not meant that Plato's rightful monarchy would imply constitu- 
tional monarchy in our technical sense. 

1 Cf. 424 D. To keep to the right music was the way to hold the fort. 



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STATICS. 

Elements of Statics 

DYNAMICS. 

Elements of Dynamics 

ART OF TEACHING. 

Lectures on Teaching 
Elementary English Grammar 
English Grammar for Beginners 
Key to West's English Grammars 



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Loney 


4/6 


Loney 


4/6 


Loney 


3/6 


Fitch 


5/- 


West 


2/6 


>> 


1/- 




3/6 net. 



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